I'd also like to see a stable version of the ports tree.
I understand that lack of people and resources is a problem. But I think such a split could help reduce some of the maintainers'/committers'/developers' workload. Imagine there are two versions of the Ports tree: CURRENT and STABLE. New ports, updates to old ports and all that goes to CURRENT -- it's basically the same as it is now. Some people out in the wild -- presumably adventurous desktop users or really some people who want to devote a machine or two they own to help FreeBSD -- use the CURRENT tree. They hit problems like most of us does now and they report them and help fix them. When these problems are resolved, the now-nonproblematic ports are commited to STABLE.
This way, STABLE users would have their stable tree, and CURRENT users could easily help the project simply by testing new ports on their own machines and reporting bugs.
Of course, it would still mean that someone would have to devote their time to think out the details, do the infrastructure changes and basically get it going. But I think it would be nice to have, no?