I regularly make threads on niche topics--by the context of this forum--that I fully anticipate will get few or no responses and interaction, and the "advice" that I can give for other people that feel anxious about opening up a conversation is simply to not give a shit, crass as it sounds. You can't apply wild expectations to a forum with a small and pretty set in their ways and preferences userbase as this, but it's also no reason to leave off if you just really want to talk about something you care about. It was largely how I approached things on TT2.0 too when megathreads roamed the earth and there were more active posters, so de-emphasis on them didn't really affect me much, but I recognize that's tied to their conversational, drop-in-drop-out nature which usually isn't my preferred way of posting anyway. The idea that they would "take away" from other thread creation opportunities or whims seemed like off the mark rhetoric. You ultimately can't externally impose motivation on people to communicate, and any "state of the forum" assessment is far more complicated than one set of guidelines hovering over the place tilting the pendulum one way or another.