It seems like progression is certainly a hot topic in the Star Trek Online community, and as a result Cryptic Studios will be hosting a devchat on the subject today at 11:30AM PST.
The subject has been covered in previous editions of the Ask Cryptic series, but the developers would like to give members of the community a chance to ask questions of the developers in real time in order to clear up any remaining confusion.
To join the chat join #STO after connecting to irc.coldfront.net with your IRC client of choice, or if you're lazy like I am, use the provided Coldfront Java client.
The original announcement can be viewed here.