Still it would be nice to let people know what has been added to the feed.
How about:
1) still using 1 (or 2) package announcement threads, but it is purely for "announcement", to be posted by those who build them. The packages are directly linked to the feeds.
2) All questions, qualms, bugs, issues, praise .... etc should go to individual topics.
3) For those packages which even the packager doesn't even know whether they are stable/usable/functional or not, there should be separate topics asking people to try them out and test them.
My 2 cents.