It's nice to see a constructive suggestion, they don't come around very often. So I'll indulge.
There definitely needs to be a severe overhaul of the forum. I do think a large part of the problem lays in the companion app, and how easy it is to post, which in my opinion is largely to blame for irrelevant, pointless topics. Really, I feel like a lot of the duplicate threads saying the same thing, such as 'nerf sunbreakers' should be merged so that people who want scroll through the feedback section can do so without seeing the same three threads 19 times out of 20.
I can get behind the idea that players who don't play shouldn't be able to post, though it wouldn't surprise me if some people played just the right amount to be able to post on the forums and fill it with nonsense.
One thing that I don't believe you mentioned (Apologies if you did, I'm under the weather and having to focus to make such a coherent post!) is that there also still some who could be classed as 'Bungie Fanboys' still posting threads with no relevance. They're few and far between now compared to all the hate.
One particular example recently has been a certain poll that has nothing but positive options, drawing so much negativity as to even spawn an insulting counter-poll. I've seen a couple of other's recently that basically say 'Great job Bungie, game is 100% perfect.
It's not really appropriate to state my view on any of this, but just as you state that the toxically negative threads must go, so must these overwhelming positive threads - they're the same amount of useless, just at the other end of the spectrum.
Long story short, feedback forums should be for constructive criticism, suggestions, and real game issues.
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Oddly enough I didn't point out the bias (or nonsensically) positive threads. I don't know if I'd classify them as "Fanboy" threads but that's just me. To me the word "Fanboy" is something the haters use to label anyone that disagrees with them. Same as when they use Desticle. Posting a poll with bias choices is along the lines of trolling quite honestly. They're looking to start something knowing it's not valid. Either that or an honest lack of knowledge on how a poll thread should work. I will attribute both sides of this coin to a likely lack of staffing as well. Especially the Moderator function. I served as a forum Mod in 2 beta tests for past games and while it's a thankless time consuming job, for the most part myself and the other mods worked very hard to keep things organized and relevant. Grouping/merging threads like you said was one way. Removing trolls was another. Most times it was just proving a troll wrong and they would go away. Unfortunately they either do not have the tools to do that correctly here, this forum isn't designed to be able to do those things, or they don't have the staffing to properly Moderate the forums. Lastly I could say they don't have the desire to but I"m an optimist.