first, are you sure it's worth it?
on-line Forums are going the way of dial telephones. the technology still exists, but nobody uses it anymore. everything is FartBook, MyBlog, TwitFeces, etc.
failed / closed:
spiceplace.com
frugalgourmet.com
cooking.com
cookingtalkforums.com
cooks.com - Forum discontinued
foodieforums.com
food.com - Forum discontinued
and more....
there are other places that exist without participation.
cookingdiscussion.com - "The most recent post is . . . Feb 6th, 2016 at 5:33pm"
justapinch.com
ezcookingonline.com - Latest Activity: Mar 21, 2016
talkfood.com - scarce participation
forums.finecooking.com - last post 3 years ago
or near no participation:
cheftalk - 2-4 threads active per day
forums.compuserve.com/discussions/Cooks_Online_Forum - this used to have 300 msgs per day; 8 topics posted to in last 38 days (excluding FDA recall robopostings)
discusscooking.com - faded to 6-8 mgs/day
thefreshloaf.com - "today's posts" used to take up 2-3 screens; now it's unusual for that listing to exceed one page
then the two pseudo-Yelp sites - axxholes that do not cook, just critique eateries, slam other people, lots of posts, little info, big rocks thown:
foodtalkcentral.com - spun off in outrage at Chowhound.com
hungryonion.com - spun off in outrage at Chowhound.com
Chowhound changed management and a portion of the membership went berserk. it has actually rebounded a bit after all the axxholes left in a huff and/or got banned when they continued to act out.
foodtalkcentral set up as 'anything goes' - a lot of people left when every other post turned into "how many ways can I incorporate the f-bomb into this sentence..." contest.
hungryonion set up as 'we're all adults here - police thyself' which worked out about as well as you would expect. admin decided that any member should be able to edit posts; don't know what happened after that.
cheftalk goes up and down. they have a totally inane set up of "professional" and "amateur" sections, when a newbie wanders into a pro section they get whacked. the management keeps sending out emails asking "what's wrong?" - people tell them, they don't listen. participation takes another dive....
Shermie aka Big Daddy's House - last post 2107-01-19 in talkfood.com - who wander in tossing a couple MOABs around and leave are of no value. he is a 'Supermoderator' in cookingforums.net - and his last post two weeks ago:
http://www.cookingforums.net/member/573-big-daddy-s-house and next most recent 4 weeks back. so not very many people will miss his participation.
as to sections as metric of good/bad/success/failure:
Chowhound - 26 + city/country locations
eGulllet - 8 + many regionals ie continent/countries subforums
cheftalk - 21
hungryonion - 4 + 4 subforums = 8
foodtalkcentral - 8 sections + Intro; + city/country locations = 9
cookingdiscussion.com - 24
justapinch.com - not navigatable - 9 "groups"
ezcookingonline.com - 5 "groups" - mostly blogs
talkfood.com - 31
cookingforums.net - 17 + total of 11 subforums = 28
compuserve.com cooks online - 12
netcookingtalk - 52
essentially double anything else - but there's no outstanding success stories anywhere in the 8 to 52 count.
but pages and pages of "sections" make use and navigation so challenging for user they simply don't come back.
"gee, it's hard"
have you researched tools for combining/merging whole sections at one go?
a total merge then a selective cull/move is usually much easier than one-by-one through every section.
if you're serious I'll give it more thought; been there done that, got 52 sections.