How about a new category of: "stuff not related to Marina"

Excellent idea. There are four ways of handling "non-M" stuff:

1. If it is a one-off matter you wish to inject into the current stream of consciousness, you can post in whatever topic is at the head of the HFW Board index. (Until the HFW site forum came along, this was our only choice at the old HFW site, because we couldn't start blogs ourselves. But that was later taken away).
2. Start a new topic in the HFW board with the title clearly announcing the contents. (If there is anything I hate, it is topic titles like, "Something interesting," where the reader has no idea what the subject is. I will use a heavy editing cudgel on any such blurry titles and beat them until the blood runs clean and clear.¹)
3. Set up an additional board for non-M topics. You would want to think over the ramifications of that. For example, if it puts your beloved new topics out in a vast, unvisited wasteland, that may not be ideal. But I'm willing to experiment, and if it turns out a new board is undesirable, the topics in it can easily be moved to the HFW board. Any ideas what such a new board should be called? The Watering Hole?
4. Set up an additional category for non-M boards. There might have to be an avalanche of non-M stuff to need to do that. At any time, boards could be moved to new categories later if the need arises.

We want to avoid getting too hierarchical and burying topics too deep. What do you think is the best course?

There is a new-topic topic in the Technical Board. When I spruce it up for v5 forum software, I'll put more emphasis on encouraging starting new topics.

Notes:
1. Notice that, following the same principle, in the Video Index, the videos' titles are abandoned in favor of the videos' content. Sometimes M's titles are not quite on target, the poor dear.

OK, but each category can hold many boards. If you had a "Non Hotforwords" Category, how many boards would be within and what would they be named? In other words, let's map out the structure: category/board/topic.