I feel the same. It's all one big blur.
I've been a moderator myself, and saw it as my duty to make a selection. Not censor out stuff I didn't like, but promote stuff I do like, and make it visible. At least for a given moment of time, for everyone to notice it.
Stuff I considered important, I added to a sticky, or otherwise easy to find FAQ document. These got tens of thousands of views. I wrote it once, and it made such a difference for readers. It answered most of their questions in advance, the whole idea of an FAQ, after all?
Elsewhere, I have proposed a panel of universally respcted members, which award points and statusses to inventions. Plausible, non credible, etc. The panel's reputation is at the same time on the line, so they will be careful what to award a new invention or research with. Also, they could promote research that's been left mostly forgotten, but deserves attention of the better researcher available on the group.
Furthermore, I see a great lack of co-operation between FE folks. Not always, but most of the time. One (wo)man rarely posesses all the talents to bring the goods home.

Wise words...

IMHO observing what's going on "backstage" in US right now, we don't have much time.
Whatever can speed up the process of experimenting and learning is very welcome.

So

Eric

Ego

It can be hard to freely give up information that was hard to work for. It is a lot easier to make unsubstantiated suppositions.

What we need more of is people doing (or proposing then someone doing) experiments to validate or disprove ideas.

It's one thing to have an eureka moment, another to think of a way to investigate it.

However, there is merit in asking valid questions with appropriate references to promote free thought.. Spoonfeed a child, and you get a fat kid that can't find food to sate his hunger.

However, if the forum community can't connect the dots, it's our responsibility to make the dots closer together. In a group of people climbing a mountain, it can be because a leader failed to point out an obstacle that a member falls.

As for the idea of pointing out threads of value, we kind of have that with the rating system. How would such a 'merit' system be organised, and would it not have the same drawbacks? One man's theology is another man's belly laugh, after all.

Let the google results fall where they may

Well said. I also agree with Dr. Peter Lindemann :"slow is fast". I think the momentum is growing exponentially. In a short time, it will grows 10 folds. By setting up this system, people just go directly to the sticky posts and ignore all other posts. It might actually killed some small but deadly creativity that consider fool's thought.

Creativity won't amount to much though if no one finds it or sees it.
Instead of "Sticky's" I think there should be separate area for working prototypes that others can replicate and test for themselves. And another for projects in development.
Currently it's like someone saving all one's documents to the desktop and forum branching would really help to bring some order to the chaos.

Peace,

We have Blogs with this forums. Nothing is stopping you from using that for that reason.

Matt