Hi Gordon;
I'll throw in my suggestions; I've been lurking about in the SME community for about a year at this point. FYI, the reason I opted to go with SME after looking for a server solution that was easy to manage, based on a well supported linux, and had an active community was the forums. Specifically, the good level of activity.
So, from the point of view of an observer, user, FOSS advocate and participant, and sometime web site designer guy, I make the following observations/suggestions of/to the SME community.
1. The "Be nice" instruction is critical. Berating someone when they don't follow protocol does not build loyalty. The Ubuntu forums are a good example of what to do. Red Hat/Fedora developers even attempt humor every now and then. Will forum moderators and those in the know ever be able to stop reminding people of what and how to do things properly? No. Might as well get used to it and smile.
2. I was and still am to a degree confused by the various domains, locations, and resources that fall under the SME umbrella. I suggest a single entry point on the web. Make it smeserver.org, point contribs.org at smeserver.org. Use Joomla as the front end there. Put a short description of what SME is right on top with a link to a static page of features, have occasional news posts underneath, for example when a new version is released. In the following order, a link to an About Us page that includes a history of SME, the current status and people involved. Then a link to wiki based documentation followed by a link to a wiki based FAQ (FAQ contributors should be asked to maintain their FAQ or FAQs. This way one or two become familiar with the software and can move into the FAQ maintainer's position when the current one decides to bail.). Then a link to the forum, a link to a wiki based repository of howtos, and a link to the contribs which could be handled by Joomla. Finally, a link to bugzilla. Put the different major resources in sub-domains or sub-directories, not on other domains. No links anywhere else, that is, if I get lost I go back to the home page and in three clicks I can get to where I was.
Put something right on the home page about donating to the project, provide a mechanism by which it can be done in three clicks or less, and thank recent contributors by name right on the front page, maybe in the same box as the link to Paypal (if that's the preferred money transfer agent, god help us).
Do away with all the other resources, or hide them in such a way that people think of smeserver.org as the place to start and end.
3. On the subject of forums, developers in forums, bug reporting in bugzilla, etc. I suggest a "protocol" be published and accessible and referenced in multiple places so people know what to do;
If one experiences some unexpected behavior, they should be advised to first search the documentation, then the FAQ. No luck, search the forums. Nothing there, search bugzilla. Nothing there, back to the forums to post an observation of the issue, and request community input. Developers participate in the forums to various degrees, maybe they jump into a thread and recommend filing a bugzilla if the issue appears to be something that they'd like to explore further, but not until the community has had a chance to work over the issue. This is what open source community is all about, in my opinion. Handling things in this way builds community and encourages participation and user education. It encourages advanced users to become mentors, and distributes the workload among more people.
If something is determined to be a user problem, it is solved in the forums (and maybe inspires a FAQ, a howto, or a clarification in the docs) and bugzilla is not filled with junk. If the community is not able to resolve the issue, a bugzilla report is made, and interaction between developers and users can continue from there in a format that is more organized and desirable to the developers. Bug reporters should then report back to their thread with the bugzilla entry so that others can follow along.
4. Forum moderators would know about the protocol and would guide the community in a friendly way. They would read the forums they moderate, and recommend that a howto or something that looks like a howto be added to the howto wiki if it appears to be mature and functional. Same thing with a FAQ. Keep the number of forums to a minimum; pretty much what it is now looks good to me based on the traffic. Keep it simple.
5. Every year or two, public elections to a small set of posts, including forum moderators. Update the SME About Us page with the results.
Building a community is critical to the survival of the project. Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but it looks to me that if one or two of the current major players disappears, the project will suffer significantly, and that would be a shame. SME is great.
Finally, I hereby volunteer to help with any of the above work.
-Pete
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