By George, I think you’ve got it!
I think the ‘Everything’ Forum includes Bloggers & Personal, General/Chat, News/Activism, and Religion... but maybe none of the rest of the Forums (not sure). I’ll bet John Robinson knows.
I used to use only the News/Activism forum, then realized I was missing some interesting or humorous things in the General/Chat and Bloggers & Personal areas... so I now click on ‘Forum’ at the top of the page which is this (for any who may not know):
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/*/index
Yes, there is definitely a difference between clicking on the “Forums” link at the top of the page and clicking on “Everything” in the forums list. This looks like a bug to me. That means thousands of FReepers are missing out on a lot of content.
And...its important to use the “Articles” and the “Activity” tabs to keep up with everything as it happens while browsing. Its easy to lose track of articles if you haven’t pinged them and are only using the “Articles” tab.