We would probably need some sort of Demi-Mod that only had mod powers in a special sub-forum of GD or something and very specific rules and set times the thread would be open and modded.
All in all, I can’t imagine wanting to do it.
vBulletin had forum leaders, I’m not sure there is an equivalent in Discourse. Forum leaders weren’t used on the SDMB but were easy to setup. As an example, the Game Masters on Mellophant were given extra editing powers in the RPG sub-forum on that board.
We’re actually talking about finally changing the name of MPSIMS right now. This is being covered a little in a thread actually for it, rather than a hijack here.
As to breaking out a topic into its own forum, that need seems to be diminished with the Tags. They can act as Sub-forums or cross-forum connectors. I’m not sure which post your post was in reference to though.
As far as GD not getting used, it is fairly light. I would not object to it being recombined with P&E, except when we near Presidential election, than P&E gets really busy and it is nice not to have GD overwhelmed.
As to actual numbers:
We have 4 busy forums as far as new threads:
Cafe Society 141 / month
In My Humble Opinion (IMHO) 129/month
Factual Questions 128/month
MPSIMS 105/month
I found a way to get the posts per forum.
Posts in last month:
GD 1200
P&E 2500
Café 9100
FQ 3500
MPSIMS 8500
IMHO 6500
The Pit 4400
The Game Room 2400
Thread Games 7000
QZ 173, this was very high 3 years ago. 10,900 Mar 2020