YYBC:
I fundamentally agree with you as far as the meaningless topics are concerned, but the point I was making, and still am, is that there are fewer topics that provoke discussion. And good discussions arise from interesting topics and/or disagree. It is not that disagreeing is the ultimate aim, it’s addressing topics that people care about enough and are interested in enough to make their opinions known and discuss them. This does not necessarily mean controversial.
And as for the Harry Potter thread, I disagree completely. The discussion was interesting, fun and involving, so who really cares if it was a bit random. We all enjoyed it, as far as I could tell. And nobody made you take part. I don’t see how it is different from the Discworlder’s Club or that kind of thing. It is a representation from the YWN users of their appreciation for a certain inyan, and I can’t see anything wrong with that.