Should forum discussions appear as recent posts and comments on the home page?

Just a suggestion.  Maybe for the recent comments they could be broken into recent comments forums, and recent comments blogs.  If there are a bunch of comments for a forum then they push any comments from a blog off the screen.  And vice versa.  So maybe a two column recent comments on the home page, one for forums and one for blogs.  Just a thought.

could we have an option when posting to not publish to the main page?  Or maybe have a "politics" forum that is separate somehow.   If someone is going to do some government bashing the poster could choose to put it in a different place instead of just putting everything out of sight.

If it's a rant, it should probably be a blog.

I'm really not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's people like me who got you to thinking that forums/political blogs shouldn't appear on the front page. Yes, I haven't always agreed with everyone's postings, but that does not mean I don't want to be aware of the dialogue going on when I sign into NLD. At this point, it seems like these very forums and blogs are the lifeblood of NLD. I would like to know about recent activity in these arenas without having to go to another page and sort through all the verbage there. Maybe there is some way we could have several topical options on the home page, such as politics, family and religion. Under these it could give the number of the most recent postings for that topic (i.e. 5 posts, etc.). In this way, we could know where the activity is and head in the direction of our interest.

Because what we are is a community, not necessarily of extremely artistic people, but of people who like to discuss ideas, I am still the most open to altering our mission statement to express who we are or at least broadening it to include what we are.

Just my current thoughts on the topic...always subject to change.

Based on this poll and on the various comments I have received on and offline, I have added forum posts back into the recent content/comment blocks on the front page of the site.  The recent forum topics/posts blocks are still available on the forum page for those who like them.  I hope this helps make the site more usable and friendly in the interim while we work on a better site design.