in reply to Private/In-Progress/Scratch nodes?

I like this Idea !

For all the reasons you gave, (especially the auto-delete feature,
to clean all those nodes which are useful only for a short time)
but also beccause it would enable us (among other benefits) to do several funny things :
It would enable the use of hyperlinked nodes with only one node apparent...

Why ? I once asked for a workshop area,
this mechanism would give us almost all we need for this workshop Area.
With this mechanism we could post a node
(titled '(WORKSHOP) workshop1')
with several links to private nodes : We would have all the flexibility needed to add/modify private nodes to fit our needs,
and split a workshop into several manageable part/sub-project,
without flooding the monastery (as they won't appear anywhere)
with nodes which don't mean anything alone...

"Only Bad Coders Badly Code In Perl" (OBC2IP)