I am amazed at the role that semantics are playing in this discussion. What if
BrowserUK had used the phrase “General Discussion” instead? And I had no idea how insecure some of us are. Would creating a general discussion section really turn us into Slashdot? Do we really expect Ruby and Python questions to usurp the Monastery?
If it does not take too much work to create a new section perhaps we should just give it a try and see what actually happens? Maybe I am wrong but I think that our sense of community is strong enough that the benefits would outweigh the negatives. Down voting seemed to work when plagiarism reared its ugly head so why couldn’t it work here to keep things in check? And think about all those "mark off-topic" considerations that could become "move to" considerations instead! Heck, it might actually help discourage off-topic questions!
In keeping with interesting names I would like to suggest we call it “Life, the Universe, and Everything”. It should not be possible to frontpage nodes in this section and by default nodes should not be included in searches and super searches. I would also suggest we give things a try before we decide whether aging out older nodes is appropriate or not.