Hi Mike --
Just answer your questions (and then some) --
I never thought of using the "About Me" tab on my profile for my notes, but isn't it always readable by others? I'd prefer to have a scratch pad/to do list that is private because my notes can be pretty rough and not ready for discussion. Also, if I started using "About Me" for genealogy notes, I wouldn't be able to use it for its original purpose (I haven't done that yet, but after learning that some users regard me as charlatan, I'm thinking I should.) Finally, the About me tab doesn't give you any way to organize your notes by branches. It becomes unwieldy if you have more than a screen or two of info.
It also never occurred to me to use a project, because I just assumed that projects were by definition collaborative and public.
What I'd like would be to have an independent page for notes (preferably one to which you could add multiple tabs as you need them for different family lines) and/or a todo list feature where you could prioritize items.
Also, I'd love to have another tab on the each person's profile for reporting problems with that particular profile (timeline issues, mothers too old to have given birth to the linked children, contested or undocumented claims, inconsistencies, etc.). The Problems tab should be editable by anyone (not just managers and pro users, but even basic users) to alert other users to be careful before completing a merge. On the merge page, there would be a red Problems Reported field that would show up if any problems had been reported. People would be able to click on the field and read the notes before completing a merge. I think this would help improve the accuracy of the profiles and prevent at least some bad merges.
Finally, I'd like to have a bookmark feature so you could easily jump to particular profiles that you've been working on.
I'm dreaming of course.