Firstly, regarding rule 1,5 I have to disagree... if you want stuff posted about apex, drag Lee here he's good at PR while I am not. Besides you are a tester at ApexDC Toast so I may just as well entrust the ApexDC PR over here to you, as you have been complaining about builds and such... so I am kindly arranging you something to do in the mean time
Though I am not so sure that PR is part of the job description for a tester, but oh well I may just need to add that then...About permissions, I am not exactly sure how I initially set it up, though originally "Site Staff" were not intended to have access to front page news (while global moderators do I think, need to check on that). Though I did give site staff -group access to news after the msg from Pietry (however, as it seems he is now a global mod also this is not needed). I really need to give some more thought to permissions and check them through.
About giving devs access to add file listings, sure but make it restricted to only posting and editing their own posts and only in the categories really needed. (I might do this after I check the permissions just as well though)