I just gave a related reaction to the binary choice. As for the commons, and in this AS/AP case, I sadly agree with you. My spending of yet more time spinning up the pinned discussion threads, is a bit against my better judgment, against hard lessons-learned. At least, I can honestly say I did my part trying.
Yet people may always surprise us, by stepping up to the plate, right here! 
Other than that a good discussion forum also has its value, and merits. If that is the best we can get, I am happy with that too. In combination with the FEP Process, I have to say, as that is the current major achievement of SocialHub. But the FEP is fragile. Started by @cjs and @pukkamustard, both no longer active in AS/AP for a long while, then I moved it to Codeberg. It has a whole bunch of facilitators, but in practice it is only @silverpill that keeps it going.