On the old forums (a few years ago) there was a zone called 'the haven', which seemed to work rather better. Maybe it was simply more strictly moderated, but it seemed to exist, and have its own conversations quite happily without apparent dissent. (Or maybe I missed the dissent, I'm a relative newcomer myself).
I suppose that when this new forum was set up, in effect it was considered that all of it was like the old haven, and then a special area was set up to allow more broad discussions. Perhaps simply that restructuring didn't quite serve the same purpose. In a lot of ways it was working ok, but I've found that private conversations are perhaps serving the purpose which the old haven did, which in a way is ok, but sometimes I think it's a shame that discussions are driven underground like that, it's a kind of failure somewhere - though I don't place the responsibility for this on anyone in particular, it's more to do with the physical structure or layout perhaps.