The accordion type text are most likely indexed by Google and does not affect SEO.

The spiders don't really view pages like humans, and you can actually use Webmaster Tools to see what the spider sees(if that makes sense).

But you can also check View Source to see what is on the page, and if it shows the text it is most likely indexed and searchable by Google.

Hope that helped.

Yes irrelevant sites are where you don't want them.

Reciprocal links are now not that great of an idea. Google forbids buying links and reciprocal are almost the same thing. However, if they are generally helpful to the consumer/user then it is alright but don't make it a far stretch.

I suggest using that. Would give you better rankings for that topic and then some juice can go to your threads.

Haha, Yes it does.

I'm not sure what you are using but vBulletin had that option. Having topic as the category would be better, but if its not doable the 3rd would be best.

That is strange Topic is Topic though. What platform are you using?

I would go with first one, more keywords for search engine to identify. I think majority would say the same, it is just more friendly for search engines.

I'm also trying to get this done as well, not sure if its doable on Volusion(don't use them).

Yandex actually crawls more than Baidu for me, and both don't benefit me at all(sucks when you pay for the bandwidth)

Meaning the link to the Author's page where ALL of his articles are available for view. I don't remember what the wordpress link was but basically something like www.wordpress.com/authors_name/

Where it shows all the author's posts, just redirect www.wordpress.com/authors_name/ to www.wordpress.com/new_authors_name/

Won't matter from what I know. Unless the links are going to the author's list of posts(don't forget to redirect to the merged author), it won't really matter.

Changing the author won't give any real affect unless the author is really that authoritative in your niche(very unlikely).

Maybe keep all micro sites and just point them to one domain from there on out.