Originally posted by geobe
If you build it, they will come!!
Actually, the very opposite is true.
Take, for example, that we used to have a Games forum. There were very few threads there, but we kept it anyway. Because it was already such a small forum, it gathered less and less traffic until it reached the point where at least week or longer would go between some activity. It was an embarrassment to itself. There wasn't enough material to entice visitors to load it instead of the other more popular forums. So, it was closed and merged into the Software forum.
A new forum has to have enough regular
material for discussion from the start
to be self-sufficient. Otherwise, it will wither and die because, contrary to what you say, if you segregate it into a minority group, it will not get as many views as it would with a larger group of discussions.