I like your recommendations for what we could be doing in the chat. There are some places where we could definitely enhance chat to support the type of content being discussed in this thread. I would be particularly interested in what @Hermes_Corp and @Hazel_Devjani would add for the embassy idea. Based on their most recent presentation, I no longer would argue for a content type being called an embassy, but would want to work with them to design a hub for output of cross-pollinator activity.
I still believe that a forum category is warranted, however. To me, the chat has an ephemeral quality and is not particularly valuable for long-tail discussions or output. I agree that we do not want to diminish the content quality of the forum, but I would argue the type of output that would be in the Community Category would augment, as opposed to diminish, forum quality. As an example, there are the beginnings of some great discussions that are generated by the Community Call. Having a place for a long-tail discussion where people could also bring some research into the discussion. I suspect it might end up looking something like the various Smart Contract Summit posts from 2021.
This category also helps to create a history of decisions and thought processes that is seemingly more accessible than having community output live in GitHub, which would be the other platform that we have that might be able to capture this institutional knowledge. There are some UX considerations we could add here to help people navigate that knowledge, but doing the “work” of community on forum gives us the ability to accomplish those goals. I believe that the chat is a valuable place to brainstorm and connect, but it is not particularly good at housing output. That’s why I think the forum would be a good location to have a Community section.