@ChesswurmOTB tentative understanding here,
So projects are discussions centered on topics (they are topics?), only rule there: try to stay on topic, but discuss freely.
It may get difficult at some point to untie the knots in the resulting spaghetti.
Can leader put a top post at any time within a thread?
What is a finished project? What is a project? I thought that these would be raw discussion for a project of Topic. That would be linked to in a more succinct and coherent way elsewhere.
Why an index of finished projects? The team front page (from main menu =>...=>forum), shows last 10 ish posts, but the list of threads (last link at bottom right), is some sort of index already.
But no way to know if a thread has stop discussing? That is your intent, right? Did you mean closed by time limit?
If the thread title is wide enough, the discussion may never reach an end, other than the time limit when no new posts.
There are already different types of threads. Existing userstyles is not discussion prone, it is more like an index of what is out there. Same for Other teams. Then i have another thread idea that i'm proposing in the same trend, where discussion might be needed to understand the code in the posts, but the initiative goes to gathering identified CSS selectors (i will send you my first draft for shrinking, if you have time).
Do you see, where i there might be some confusion on my part?
Of course, there are other threads which might be projects like you mean (but still unclear to me).