I think the Forum deserves a place on the main menu. At least in the sub-menu. But with the current design it's been hidden away at level 3. Lot's of people complaining that the forum is difficult to find. I call that a failed UI design. Tucking it away like this is is going to kill the forum with time. That would be a shame.

The lack of response, lack of focus on community development resources and general priorities speak volumes.

It seems that DNN would like to become a SiteFinity and has forgotten the key lessons of how the community made DNN more prominent than SiteFinity in the first place.

No use crying over spilled milk. The last 8 years haven't been a very pleasant ride as it was. To continue the analogy, its ended in a train crash.

I've spent the last few days looking around at other options and I've been encouraged to find the now dead spirit of DNN alive elsewhere.

I think separating off to become a second rate forum would be a waste of time. The current forum answers questions and does what it needs to but what I have found lacking is training material keeping inline with current releases. Chris Hammond was great at providing webinars and video tutorials, I believe he left DNN in February and has a new baby and a new job so I doubt he'll find much time to update his previous training output to DNN 7.
The DNN community create modules/extensions and these are bought and used by the business sector, so there's a symbiotic relationship and in my opinion that's enough. If the DNN corp don't supply training material to the community, and therefore the modules/extensions can only be created by those inside DNN corp, this will create a monopoly and also a brain drain of ideas that come from working in the field and encountering everyday experiences.
I can create modules using the templates provided by Chris but I am using ASP.NET and T-SQL skills to get and set the data, but what I need to know is how to access common things like user details, development best practices such as naming tables and most of all an explanation of the DNN implementation of DAL2. Trawling through forums and web articles gleaning little bits here and there is time consuming, in some cases confusing and leaves big holes in my overall knowledge.  I would like DNN corp to revisit their approach to training - maybe even charge small amounts like Umbraco do for time limited access to videos.
Anyway, I feel I've moaned enough about this now! 
Come on DNN corp keep up the otherwise good work and now provide us with great training material for DNN 7.