I've been thinking about this. I think we've been misusing the Alliance Requests thread. Let's reserve that one for existing wikis like Wars Wiki and GameHiker. They were around for a long time before NIWA. For startups from members of this forum we could have the NIWA Maternity Ward.
Here's my opinion on things:
The Alliance Request thread seems pretty active, as well as some other threads about incoming, pending, invited, considered, whatever wikis
Although this might have been the original suggestion, why don't we create a child board for all of the requests for affiliation or adding members in that board, and keep NIWA Discussion specifically for topics concerning the member-wikis, NIWA itself, and its forum?
In the child board for affiliation and suggestions for adding a member to NIWA, we could have each wiki have its own topic and then be able to sticky some as well. It would all work out.