It got posted to one of the other threads. The control switch for those notifications is in the upper right corner of your state forum display screen.
Mine was already set to indicate "no notifications," but toggling it back and forth seemed to get rid of those forum messages on top of my screens. Thus, for now I'm no longer stateless.
1. Link Free Republic to the home page (http://www.freerepublic.com/) on every page.
2. Create a site map/clarify "topics" vs "forums".
I think there's a bit of confusion with the topics page linked on the upper right and what I assume are considered "forums" on the left. (Campaign 2002, General Interest, News/Activism, Religion, VetsCoR)
It appears that the topics are not "subtopics" of individual "Forums", but an alternate categorization method of all posts, site-wide...?
If so, I'd put a link to "Topics" with the link to "forums" on the left. And to make it more intuitive, I'd say "List by Forum" or "List by Topic".
3. On the posting form, you allow people who are starting a new thread to type in topics or select them from a list. I'd at least say there that "the topic must be already established"... I'd probably force they use the selection method to avoid problems of typos.
(I've read most but not all the posts on these threads, so if this has all been said before, I apologize...)