[Rock]

Fair point, although as administrator you still can do a few things. Sometimes it's just a matter of thinking outside the box. For example if you want to focus discussion on a certain forum/topic you could modify the earnings to increase SP points in that particullar sector (if that's possible). You can also disable post count completely on some sections to might have the potential of creating topics with not much content or nontechnical content. Such as random/lounge.

Maybe also forum contests and certain awards can be introduced, even only for a limited time. For the sole purpose of targeting the focused activity/discussion towards certain topics. Simply create events and things that will either reward good user behaviour, or discourage bad user behaviour. Don't know if you've thought about those already, just dropping my thoughts and suggestions on what you or maybe staff in some cases can do.

But yeah in the end this a forum, one big organism with cells. I wouldn't say the administration can control discussion completely but to a certain extent it could try as best as it can.