Streamline the site and it would be simpler and better.

I don't know who will see this if anyone, but this site would be much better if all of the 17 topical areas under permaculture were reduced to just 3.  Personally I would group all the first 15 together, and then have "resources" and "jobs/internships" separately.  There's no need for so many areas being there are only a few posts a day, and it is a pain to go to each one and find out what is new each day or so.  Just my thoughts, no offense meant to the powers that be.

I for one completely ignore some board topics such as lawn care; I live in the desert, haven't had a lawn in over 20 years. Since my dog of 13 years died a few years ago I have not replaced her and have no other critters, so I ignore critter care. I haven't been growing much as I split time between desert and mountains and it just doesn't seem worth the effort at this time (I use the growers markets), so I mostly ignore those topics.

I do read the homesteading, building and energy topics as well as woodland care and would rather not have to do my own sorting as I look for those related posts. So I am happy with the status quo.

I skim down the list of topics, right click and open new tabs on those I wish to read, then click the "mark as read" down at the lower right of the first page. The next time I login the topics with new posts are indicated and I can decide/select all over. It works for me. OMMV.

Anyhow those are my thoughts. It would be interesting to here from others who may follow selected topics or who read the whole forum.

I think these are both excellent points.  I made some suggestions along these lines for the developers of the software we are moving to.

Like mtnDon, I also prefer the topic divisions as they are now.

I don't mind the way the forums are set up now but some tweaks wouldn't be bad either.  I think condensing everything into just 3 forums would make this site a lot more chaotic and just be too much though.  One thing that's always kind of confused me though is that there's a permaculture forum and an organic practices forum which have a lot of overlap though I see why it's useful to have two separate forums.