I'm certainly interested in hearing everyone's comments on all these issues.

an *occasional* thread like that is not going to kill anybody (except the bunny rabbit) and can be fun and relieve some stress.
With "occasional" in the sentence, I wholeheartedly agree

Regarding having people vote ... Are Steve and I so bad at moderating
you are doing great.

A many questions might actually belong in several forums at the same time
B That said, I've been thinking about creating the option to create product/topic-specific groups.
does A not apply to B ?

others would like to have a forum for their freeware 8052 program or open-source project. However, this wouldn't affect the 8052 forum since they'd be very specific forums
yes, that would be true

Erik