Flag Button 

A meta comment: the Flag button requires too many clicks to be reasonably usable. As part of the interface offer

"Flag Spam"
"Flag Offtopic"
"Flag Duplicate"

and get rid of the stupid popup and confirmation dialog which then must also be clicked to close.

Court Settlements 

Settlement agreements - never sealed.

Reposting Copyrighted Articles 

Moderate and delete copyrighted articles reposted by individuals, please.

There can be a flag that leave the topic title or subject in place, and a line that says "deleted due to copyright."

Anyone who wants to make their point can link to a copyrighted article.

Better "searching ..." (Meta) 

I'd like to be able to create a search string that will return the various category results minus the annoying and repetitive stuff.

For example, all posts that contain "birth" or "birth certificate" would be ignored (the results could say 'we have ignored the following:' at the bottom of the list, in case there's an inadvertent exclusion.)

I'm sorry that there are so many folks who don't understand the purpose of a site like this ... even CompuServe, many eons ago, had a way to set an ignore flag and ignore threads that were of no interest.

Explain Web 2.0 on your Web Site 

This is a meta comment. (1) You have to explain Web 2.0 to people, not just assume that they know what it is.

(2) Your introductory material is too verbose.

(3) I suggest a VERY SIMPLE naive-user interface much as Apple had with a "miniFinder" versus "Finder" ... I'm showing my age ... or with later versions of the Mac OS, the ability to choose a simpler or more complex desktop.

The Web miniFinder would still end up taking people to the brainstorming area, but it would go through "baby steps" to get there.

(4) You need to create a place to accommodate people who want to crtique an interface or suggest improvements. And when they do, and they are angry and frustrated, the people handling that feedback need to be able to accept the anger and frustration as a real phenomenon, and accept that the interface is probably responsible.

(5) "Transparency" means more than the data. If the interface is not superlative, there's little point. Data.gov appears to be a step in the right direction. By contrast, the Maryland "statestat" Web site is marginal, and its mechanism for tracking stimulus dollars can only be characterized by the Computer Science Major term of art, "it sucks."