This is an interesting discussion!
I would welcome a new forum specifically for authors promoting their books, for a slightly different reason. I realize this topic was started as a request to alleviate the flood of self-promotions throughout the forum, but I have a slightly different perspective.
Recently I bought a new smartphone with a reader and it was surprisingly difficult and time consuming for me to wade through the Deals/Freebies/etc forum to find a couple of books to download to it (through Smashwords). If there had been a distinct forum for authors to advertise their books and deals, it would have been a lot easier for me to find those books and I might have picked up a few more. It was such an unpleasant experience that I have not tried it again.
On the other hand, the cryptic self-promotion threads you all have been complaining about have gone by pretty much unnoticed by me. I saw the "Any readers?" thread, but didn't read anything after the first post.
It seems from my point of view that the authors are annoying the people who can best help them get more sales and not drawing the attention of the people that make those purchases. A new forum -- or at least, a way to distinguish themselves in the old forums, such as with "new author" or "new release" tags -- could help solve both sides of the issue.