Thanks for this, seems to be lively over there! 
It’s really a pitty FSSF membership is required to join the community’s apparently most active discussion platform. I’ve been happy with the help I got on the forum, but I feel I could learn a lot more and identify much more with the dev community if I could join these channels (but as stated earlier, I’m not ready to join the FSSF). I’ll start learning Fable, and the Fable chat channel is open for everyone, which I find great as a newcomer (and as a complete newbie I was still able to help out someone, which shows welcoming everyone also has benefits).
Regarding the forum, as you said @cartermp, it also has a important role to play. To improve its usability, there was a request to add categories, but it went unanswered by admins. Do you know if something’s happening behind the curtains?