I might be mistaken, but if I recall correctly, Steven is not very enthousiastic about being pushed in some structured releases schedule or namings, with official and more traditional alpha's, beta's, patches, updates, etc.
If that is he case, it is not very useful to try and force such a structure in the forum also.
Then it might be good to keep it simple, and just use the here suggested structure:
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=16894.msg99771#msg99771Users will be able to find the latest official release, and info about it under Announcement> MusicBee Release
and the latest patch/update or whatever you call it in Announcement> MusicBee Pre-Release
That should be easy to learn and understand, and easy to direct to.
And then Steven will always be able to choose to have a thread named "v3.1 development", or "v3.0 updates", or whatever.
One thing I do feel quite strongly about in that case, is that download links, wheter it is for patches, updates, stable releases, plugins, etc. should always be found in the start post, and not somewhere hidden in a long list of later postings.
edit,
I see you just also posted on the matter. I will read that now too ;-)