So, a lot of people have been complaining about the lack of the flood and the loss of the community forum's atmosphere, but I don't think it's necessarily just because we don't have an arbitrary distinction between the two. Rather, it's that the tags don't serve as a full indicator of what the context of a post is. Thus, I propose that a handful of "contextual tags" or something that gives explicit and universal information about a thread be added. To help distinguish them from the text tags, it might be nice to represent them with a picture or other unwritten form. Something that can tell a user something concrete about a thread that isn't just the general topic.
For example, regardless of whether or not politics and religion are continually allowed, it might be nice to mark a thread as controversial or potentially controversial. This isn't to make moderation more lenient on people. Rather, it might serve as a warning that responding in the wrong way to the contents of a thread might not be a good idea. Another use could be if someone has a serious question, it might be nice for them to be able to mark their thread as such just so that it isn't squashed by condescension.
More so, there could be a tag for joke threads, off topic nonsense, and various other threads that might be fun for some but are frustrating wastes of time for others.
I'm sure something might be a better solution and I'm sure that the idea would have to be developed, but it's a start.