To return to the original topic of the thread - now that we have the AuthorCP backend that does the job of telling mods and staff which articles are Under Review and Awaiting Approval (sorted, no less), can we just excise entirely all Awaiting Approval and Draft articles from the article listings? I know it doesn't effect normal users but for staff and mods at least it would make browsing the articles section much cleaner

To return to the original topic of the thread - now that we have the AuthorCP backend that does the job of telling mods and staff which articles are Under Review and Awaiting Approval (sorted, no less), can we just excise entirely all Awaiting Approval and Draft articles from the article listings? I know it doesn't effect normal users but for staff and mods at least it would make browsing the articles section much cleaner

Who are you asking? I'm fine with whatever solution makes it clear and easy to get the kind of articles we want to look at. The only possible disadvantage I can think of is that when one version of an article gets published there are sometimes duplicate drafts laying around that should be deleted, and this would be more obvious if there was a way to look at all stages of article in alphabetical order. But that's not a common case.

Another article question - why do some things have no stage tag? Example: http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/creative/game-design/some-game-playing-styles-and-how-games-match-o-r2733 And why can't I comment on this regardless of what stage it's in?

To return to the original topic of the thread - now that we have the AuthorCP backend that does the job of telling mods and staff which articles are Under Review and Awaiting Approval (sorted, no less), can we just excise entirely all Awaiting Approval and Draft articles from the article listings? I know it doesn't effect normal users but for staff and mods at least it would make browsing the articles section much cleaner

Who are you asking? I'm fine with whatever solution makes it clear and easy to get the kind of articles we want to look at. The only possible disadvantage I can think of is that when one version of an article gets published there are sometimes duplicate drafts laying around that should be deleted, and this would be more obvious if there was a way to look at all stages of article in alphabetical order. But that's not a common case.

Another article question - why do some things have no stage tag? Example: http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/creative/game-design/some-game-playing-styles-and-how-games-match-o-r2733 And why can't I comment on this regardless of what stage it's in?

Those articles pre-date this system.