Here's an annotated picture of the current setup of posts/topics that appear on the homepage
notes;
"topic" refers to the 1st post of a thread. so, "topic title" is the title used for the first post, it's the title you see in the forum view etc. You can change the title when you make a reply, but this is ignored on the homepage.
the community voting buttons and the votes shown refer to the 1st post.
I'm not sure if this is the best setup, and I'd welcome your thoughts.