+1 I'm not sure if this is what you meant but I feel like if we take out any section of the forums the forums would die.
Forums are for conversations, not shopping. What's the point in 100's of amazon deal posts a month with an average of under 100 views each and 0 replies?
I think the strength of the forums are the members ENGAGING with each other, helping each out, discussing travel tips, politics, news, finance, Jewish life etc...
Don't you think it makes more sense to have a nice landing page on DDMS with a grid of all deals that you can filter & sort, vote up, comment, thank the poster, report dead etc...