Actually, I think both aspects are useful. You and mearrin are right, it needs to attract people - and I hope to have a go myself but came across the same sorts of issues you mentioned.
However, threads have a tendency to fill up, or distract. The current Request forum is probably best left as it is for other projects and have another sub forum for CWBP "requests" as a more internal function.
The wiki page is just something that would provide a one page "status" of each request.
All this does need managing tho! It could be that the status is just a constantly edited "sticky" - that would work.