TheMadScientist - 11:01 pm on Jan 9, 2013 (gmt 0)

If you mean this current forum page, I'm not so sure. I see one link that says "homepage" (in the top-left logo graphic alt) and at least 3 other links to the home page using text "home". I thought one big no-no was to have multiple links to the same page, especially with different anchor text.

LOL ... If home and homepage aren't treated the same by search engines these days they're back in the 90s and I highly doubt they're trying to rank for the keywords 'home' or 'homepage', so having it 'discounted as link text' makes no difference what-so-ever. (The link weight passes, the text doesn't = good in some situations.)

I also see a graphic "Post Reply" which has alt="add your comments" which links to the same place as the text link: "reply to this topic"

I'm fairly certain GoogleBot isn't logged in when it visits, so those aren't even present, and even if it was, I'm even more certain they're not trying to rank the 'reply' page in the SERPs so 'what makes sense to the visitors' is a fine answer.

Not to mention also multiple links to: :"Forums Index / Google / Google SEO News and Discussion".

Do you mean the totally consistent header and footer links, which will easily be detected as such by search engines and weighted accordingly?

Maybe your reply is a joke and I missed it, because the nav here, is concise, makes sense, it's not spammy or 'stuffed', it's easy to use, and it's easy for anyone to 'get' (including an algo).