With many forums I have been a part of, they are slowly dying, and I thought "Official Threads" were part of the reason. Of course, Reddit has taken over. And, imo, one of the reasons it's popular (even for retro video game discussions) is because there's countless topics. They don't have a mega thread for all small posts or anything.
I think it's better to just make a thread if your topic is somewhat worthy instead of sticking it in a 200 page thread. I like those threads for what they are supposed to be. But have not visited them in a while.
Not to say this forum had this issue (or at least not while I was here), but moderators on other forums tend to have some form of OCD where they don't like threads at all ("please use this thread", "please search", etc."). Or you had a bunch of backseat moderators saying "google". That was always kinda annoying to me.