If some form of tagging was implemented it would be easier to merge the three categories and then just tag them as apporpriate.

Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. There's already been some talk about this and such a system seems to be already in place, somehow. A tagging system would solve many problems at once, and not only this specific one of code-like sections. It would give an alternative to those wanting "a new section for"... it would reduce the number of sections actually very similar to each other... it may comprise special, "official", tags that would help triggering specific actions, and so on. I dream of a truly tag-powered PM, like those social bookmarking sites, but... better than them, because this is PM!

Certainly lots of uses abound. One I would like to see is tagging threads and posts as having historical or cultural value, such as the infamous Paco thread^*. That would make it a lot easier for newcomers to learn the subtleties of Perl Monks and make it easier for those that have been here a long time to reminisce.

(*) Paco thread: How do I recursively process files through directories; specifically (Ovid - poor paco) Re: How do I recursively process files through directories and A Tale of a Wisdom Seeker.

Certainly lots of uses abound. One I would like to see is tagging threads and posts as having historical or cultural value, such as the infamous Paco thread

Yep, I've asked myself about official or de facto bulletin boards or "neverending threads", and specifically if there were a list of such nodes and threads somewhere. If a tagging system were in place, the list would be automatically returned by selecting the tag "historical", or "cultural". I am also thinking that one should choose how the tags should behave in a hierarchical structure like that of PM: presumably different sections would automatically apply one, e.g. in SoPW nodes would automatically be tagged as "questions", and as I said, there would be a predefined set of "official" tags about the subject matter, e.g. "web", "sort", "optimization" to choose from, along with the freedom to add user defined ones. (Actually it would be nice to have a means to make the official set grow out of choices from the community, possibly with the ability to create aliases: e.g. if general consensus converges on "optimization", and someone uses "performance", then the former could become official, and the latter an alias to it.) Also, they should be probably inherited from posts to replies, with the possibility of being changed too... thus there would be threads and single nodes tags. Oh, and another idea: tags could be applied automatically also as triggered by special events, e.g. if a node ends up in the daily best list or is frontpaged, then it could be marked as "best" or "frontpage" respectively. This would help people searching good quality stuff.