I propose that the new Bitcoin forum develops an active merchant directory that is verified by the community.
What do you mean by "verified"? Someone uses it and vouches for it? In that case, it'd have to be higher repped/ranked users. But what if the merchants turned scammed? The user(s) who "verified" the merchant would be suspected for being an alt of the owner/working in relation with the owner, and would cause the user to potentially be neg-repped. This in turn would cause no one to really verify any merchants.
And TBH the Digital Goods section/Services section has bountiful merchants if you just take the time to look through them.
I meant a indexed list of Bitcoin Services instead of an ANN page, while Announcement pages are useful for finding new services users need to recall what companies accept Bitcoin afterwards, keeping it organized saves time for people who say want to find sites that accept Bitcoin to buy anime dvds or Halloween costumes etc they also do not tend to include regional adoption example local stores that accept Bitcoins which is a section that needs improving.
Keeping a present list on the new forum would be as simple as adding an entry into a dictionary with a reference and location, similar to the wikipedia with verification from the community to avoid scams.
Examples would include Bitcoin ATMs and their locations, sites that accept Bitcoin for goods like overstock, newegg etc or specialized sites that provide webhosting for Bitcoins.
Categorizing them and having a reference that updates more frequently than the wikipedia is what i'm proposing and while most members have accounts on the wiki it does not get updated as much as the forum so integrating it with the software seems like a particularly useful addition to increase adoption and awareness of services.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/want-to-edit-the-wiki-without-paying-a-fee-read-this-540216
