I'm not sure I quite get the purpose of an OT section. Or rather, I'm not sure why anyone would bother browsing the section. If I want to read conversations that don't have to do with Perl (hypothetical only of course!) I'll go to another site, I won't browse through the OT nodes section.

There is something to be said for OT nodes not showing up in any given thread, though. What if moderators could consider a node as "off-topic", which just flags it as such? That way, if you don't want your page filled with off-topic posts you might have the option to hide or collapse all nodes marked as off-topic. Presumably any given node would inherit off-topicness (off-topicity?) from its parent as far as rendering goes.

This would avoid putting an extra section into the already-beefy navigation link area, and seems to me an elegant solution, or at least a workable idea.

Plus, it gives those slacker pmdevils some work. (just kidding; I think the work you folks do is wonderful)

LAI