[Adrian Schneider]

The problem is not with the software, it's with the IA.

The nested forum model does not work that well... that's why Discourse is limited to two levels. Nobody wants to browse 8 levels deep, nor do they want to browse hundreds of forums.

Having a few basic categories, and combine it with heavy tagging, and you can achieve what you want. For the sake of an example, look at how StackOverflow uses tagging. You can combine any number of tags, and for all intent's and purposes, a tag is basically a forum. You can combine them as many times as you want, or can you view a single one.

Compare that with the forum structure, you end up having x * y forums (or x * y * z, as in my case with locations), and it creates a horrible mess. You have duplication, but you can't make changes without having to update all of the others as well. Then, things get out of sync, and it creates a lot of extra work to maintain.

Anyway - this is just my opinion on the matter. I'm sure many forum owners will disagree.

Cheers