Something that's helped me find discussions happening outside of general discussion is the magical "New Posts" button at the top of the forum navigation bar. This shows all the most recent posts across all forums. So whenever you click it you will see something that has just been posted.

This ensures that all the topics you are looking at are either new, or active. Coincidentally a lot of the topics here are ones that have been posted in general discussion, probably for the reason you described. However I think if more people browsed the forums using the "New Posts" button like I do, they'd realise that the section of the forums you post in is irrelevant as far as viewership goes.

The feature is a double-edged sword though, because the same property that makes it convenient can also be a nuisance as threads can quickly fall off the first page, since it bumps the most recent posts in the entire forums.