Meta is not only about software development, so don't try to restrict his use for that matter.
I did not. But I don't think it's about personal essays either.
Besides, you'll have to define what a "personal" essay is.
That's not so hard to do - anything outside the scope of Wikipedia's / meta's defined mission is, by definition, personal stuff. I still think that it should be deleted, but because people will cry "censorship" if it is, the creation of a Crap:, excuse me, Scratch: namespace might satisfy those who need Meta for mental masturbation, while it still allows us to filter the RC accordingly. (If you think I'm harsh here, read the stuff that Saprtacus puts on meta.)
I would prefer it if Jimbo would just state categorically that Wikipedia is not a hosting provider, and give us authority to clean it up according to the criteria I have outlined in: http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-January/008747.html
But if Jimbo wants meta to be our general wiki for everything, then we should at least be able to filter that defined subset.
This was asked on the french wiki btw (not by me). I think it would for example make sense to hide all the automatic generation of bots (after it is checked these are correct).
We already have that feature. See Wikipedia:Bots. Any registered bot is hidden by default from RC. Currently, Brion is our bot-registrar.
Regards,
Erik