Thanks for the excellent thoughts, Bruce...although I didn't realize inflation was so rapid that your 7 cents had increased to 8¢ by the time you actually clicked Send. (The two Point #4's, that is. ;-) )We've both apparently been thinking a lot alike on some of the logistical aspects. Your points #4 (both of them) through 6 are at the very core of the design philosophy, and #1 is the prime aspiration for user interactions.
Your points 2 and 3 logically follow from #1, though I'd be grateful for additional viewpoints. As small a niche as this hobby occupies, too many categories not only add to complexity but also spread the reader's attention out between them, so that it creates the impression that there's even less activity than there actually is. (This was a problem with the old LWCA Community Forum. Ten initial categories were too many, and later consolidation to six did not help enough to keep them adequately used either.)
On the other hand, ironically, having too few categories can also discourage posting. The current two categories here on the Message Board are intended to cover all types of activities below 530 kHz (plus a little general news and administrative stuff like this topic) in this particular category, and everything experimental above 530 in the other. It's not at all complicated and appears on the surface to be working OK.
But is it really? I can't help but notice we all seem to live on Internet Time; meaning, whatever we see on our screens right now is the only thing that's important, and anything that's already dropped off-screen is no longer important and can be ignored or forgotten entirely. Add the all-too-human "monkey see monkey do" tendency and you get TikTok--or, in our case, if all folks see on their screens for several days are technical discussions, thy start to think of the entire category as being mainly for that, and posting of reception reports dwindles to nothing for a long time. Another example: When was the last time you saw a post here about space weather or Natural Radio? They're very much on-topic for this category, but get swamped by other topics, and then are ignored.
I don't pretend to have any solution for this myself, so all ideas on category designations are welcome at this stage. I leave you with Einstein's great challenge: "Everything should be made as simple as possible. But no simpler."
John