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Better solution would be to actually create such threads more often, and especially participate in the discussion more actively (no, I'm not angry about nobody ever saying anything when I try to start such discussion).
As a matter of fact, few reply to my design and theory threads either. Maybe my particular problems are simply too specialized, but with you we have a second data point.
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I think the sort of threads that would go in the new forum are slower-paced than most: people will think carefully about what they want to say, so replies might take a few days to appear and a thread might go on for a long time. (I could be completely wrong.) Having the threads in a separate forum will stop them from vanishing before they've really started.
This really is the crux of the issue. It can take a while to even comprehend what somebody talks about in a theory thread, and then a bit longer to form an intelligent opinion. In that span of time, these threads drop like stones beneath the daily ebb and flow of practical programming questions.
Now, I personally favor keeping all Practical and Programming posts in one forum for exactly mystran's reason: it makes the experienced programmers at least *see* the issues newbies have. We need to remain a welcoming community, because a community that stops welcoming new members soon ceases being a community at all.
On the other hand, the unfortunate fact is that this community acquires new permanent members (who post many times and advance enough to understand a theory section) very, very slowly. In the meantime, advanced topics started by the more permanent users appear in a forum mostly perused by new members and those requiring programming help.
In fact, I get the impression that many advanced users may deliberately avoid the OS Programming board right now to avoid reading newbies' questions they don't want to answer, unfortunately also missing the theory and design topics that do appear. If we add a new forum, theory and design topics can sit near the top of the board for a day or two before someone invents a new theory/design topic to preempt them, and those wishing to only help new developers some of the time can catch up on more interesting subjects.
Edit: To test all this, I'm going to go post one of the example design topics. While I'd like to post my troll topic, I think I'll end up with something for a broader audience.