Certainly there is a mod I could apply to give you the behavior you desire. However, there are already so many mods and private customizations applied to the site that it took me 30+ hours to apply the last phpBB update and then get all of the mods and customizations working again. If some requested feature requires more than a simple adjustment of an existing configuration setting, there needs to be a substantial level of interest before I will consider applying yet another mod.
If you know of some existing phpBB configuration setting that will give you the behavior you desire, by all means point it out to me.