So my idea is that forums should include any node of any type, as long as it is associated with a forum taxonomy term. That is, if I create any node at all and give it the taxonomy term Forum->Events, it will appear in my Events forum.
yes, i think many people want this. the current behavior could be preserved as an option since it is occasionally desirable. I am imagining a select box on the forum page where you select which node types should appear in the forum. A bit trickier from a UI perspective is the posting form. When you create an event node, do you want to be asked in which forum it should appear. Are events always in forums. You get where I am going with this.
The current forum package does not work this way. It only shows nodes of type 'forum' and has a forum table which includes all forum nodes. I think both of these 'limitations' could be removed. Unless of course there is good reason for them that I do not see. Which is why I'm asking now.
That forum table seems to be needed in order to support 'shadow' topics. These are pointers to a new location when an admin moves a topic from one forum to another. It is a nice feature, but that table causes confusion.