When we get to re-organizing categories (and yes, you’re way too early on this), the overarching goal will be to reduce the number of categories in favor of using tagging more extensively. Now, with that in mind… specific notes:
Where do you think that gallery plugin will be sourcing its artwork? Yes, it could be done with tagging, but personally, I would prefer that it just be a different display mode for artwork categories. Then the gallery view works not just for the Forum Gallery pieces, but all of the Artwork subcategories.
In the history of the forum, we’ve done it both ways. Split, merged, and resplit. The final split was done at the request of our members. People posting WIPs don’t always want critique. That’s a false assumption.
That said, if we had a #critique-wanted tag (and people actually made use of it), then merging the two makes more sense.
Not likely. This category was also generated at the request of our members. We’d be more likely to merge Blender Tests with this category and incorporate a #sketchbook tag as well as a #blender-test tag.
“Released” is absolutely needed. We already have people posting support requests for using scripts and add-ons here. Taking the word “Released” off only heightens ambiguity.
This would likely remain a single category. Tags will be used to differentiate render engines.
This one is trickier. It’s true that there’s a lot of overlap between rendering and materials, but the workflows for lighting and final render versus material and shader editing are still very much different… This one requires further thought.
The BA support forums will likely be better suited in Misc… and I’d recommend adopting “Site Support” as the name. Meta is too vague.
The Off-topic Chat forum is at the bottom for a reason. Way back in the day, it was up in there with the General Discussion categories. It leaked negativity all over the place. One might argue that the General Discussion categories still haven’t fully recovered from that. But with Off-topic Chat down at the bottom, that category is a much more pleasant experience.
In fact, I might go so far as to suggest that we move all of General Discussion to the end of the list, bumping Artwork and Support to the top. Those categories are really what this forum is all about and what I’m personally most interested in promoting. Who knows, maybe that move would help promote further positivity in those categories.