I'm not so sure about having departments/sections for things. I'd like to believe that we can use intelligent subject lines, and refrain from changing 'My carburator problems' to 'Natalie Portman rocks my intake manifold'.

I agree that new nodes should NOT appear in the site Newest Nodes, but should perhaps have it's own newest nodes page.

I would imagine that this section wouldn't have anywhere near the traffic that the rest of the site does (with the possible exception of the FAQ, which no one seems to read...), so rather than imposing a large programming overhead on vroom or possibly chromatic (who has been doing some site mods), we could (attempt to) manage it ourselves by avoiding pointless postings, and by using useful subject lines.

Along the content lines, a lot of people keep mentioning IT only type subjects. I'd like to say it could be anything. Perhaps we could create a specialties page that we all list our areas of expertise (I've rebuilt a few engines in my time, punched out a lot .308 rounds, hacked micro controllers, and know a bit about houseboat maintainence). So, for the moment, let's not say it's only computing related topics.

--Chris

e-mail jcwren