The Prob Reports sub concept is a little confusing but the premise is quite sound and logical.
Bear with me (or not... whatevs).
In the past people would encounter and report problems in the main Sonar forum. Some would be confirmed as actual bugs while others would be system specific (require system tweaks, patching, hardware replacement or other technical advice), some were user error (people doing things the program wasn't designed to or going about them the wrong way in which case workarounds or procedural advice is needed, etc).
So the actual bugs within the program that users had found and that needed to be fixed would get very quickly buried amongst all those other issues AND all the other more general threads not related to actual problems. The Baker's may pop in and happen to spot a problem report, test it out and add it to their to do list but amongst all the other threads it was very random. Not a particularly efficient way to tap into the forum's/user base's input.
Alex started that unofficial bug reports thread and it was quite organized, regimented and efficient. People could report something they thought was a bug, provide a recipe to repro it, others would test it out (often times Alex himself) and then either it could be confirmed as a non system specific problem with the actual program. Then people were encouraged to open a problem report ticket and post it so the issue could be tracked. Whatever your opinion of Alex' personality or hosting style this was an extremely useful thread and quite a few issues got fixed because of it I think. The Baker's could just go in, see what was up, cross reference the ticket number and make a determination as to prioritizing it in their fix agenda.
Now instead of having all that in one thread manned by one user they decided to create a specific subforum for it. Once something is confirmed it can get tossed in there and the Baker's can just go in and see what actual problems have been identified and confirmed by ALL of us users.
The reasoning behind not putting unconfirmed bugs in there is so that the problem can be viewed and checked out by more people. The Sonar forum has far more people cruising through than any of the other forums so you'll get more eyeballs on it. This means if someone has encountered the same issue but have figured out a solution of some sort (whether it be a hardware fix, procedural fix, workaround, etc) the person reporting the problem will have a better chance of being able to get on with their work. It also means that if it is not yet confirmed as an actual bug more people are looking at it to test it out and confirm it which provides more impetus for Cakewalk to look at it and fix it... which then in turn means we get better and more relevant patches/updates.
So yes... I agree it does seem odd that the "Problem Reports" sub forum isn't for actually reporting problems on may encounter but the way it is currently set up means less white noise that the Baker's have to sift through to get to things they can actually do something about (as opposed to someone's system borking out or user error) and it still gives the user full access to the largest pool of Sonar users who may be able to help them either fix their problem or confirm there is indeed a problem with the program (because WAY more people look at the Sonar forum than the Problem Report forum).
This does still all seem to be in the experimental phase though so we'll just have to see exactly how efficient it ends up being for the final product and most definitely 99% of users here aren't really going to pick up on (or even care) about the nuances of the system I just described BUT it does seem to have been done for a good reason and if it works out/people participate it should be very useful to the Baker's attempts at squishing every last remaining bug in the program.
So I get the frustration and it is weird but in this case I think Alex was really just trying to keep with the program laid out by the Baker's and shuffling things in a way that your issue got the attention it needed.
As far as other issues regarding hosts... well it obviously needs some tweaking because it's causing quite a bit of rancor but for the stuff that just needs to be seen by the Baker's like the Feature Requests, Problem Reports and even the Forum Discussion (which is specifically designed to b*tch about the forum itself) I think it's pretty cool we now have a more direct line to the ears and eyes of the Baker's.
Not taking any sides. I just spend a LOT of time reading this forum so maybe see what the Baker's are trying to do compared to others who actually have real lives. Only trying to offer up some perspective as to the reasoning why all those new sub forums exist and why/how they work (in theory) form what I've gleaned.
Peace.