Would it possible to change the comment links on the front page news stories to be a link to a corresponding forum thread? I find that this would streamline things a lot more and encourage discussion on the latest news in one place. Just an idea.

Well, not every news article has a corresponding forum post, but I'll switch some settings around and make sure the articles which are promoted from forum topics do use those as the comments.

Cool! Thanks PCJ! What made me think of this is actually this other site that I frequent called http://www.macrumors.com/ If you go have a second or two, visit their front page and click on the comment links at the bottom of their news articles. Basically whoever posts the news creates an 'official' thread that corresponds with the news and I find that this generates much more discussion for topics. The reason for this is that a lot of visitors to these kinds of sites visit the front page first to check news, then immediately want to discuss it but couldn't be bothered digging around threads to find discussion. Anyway, just some feedback and thoughts. Whatever works though, you guys have created such an amazing site and forum already.

We actually discussed that when setting the site up, I didn't see the point of it but if you guys want to do that we can look into it.