Topica

For one of our latest activities we have to select and join one of the most active discussions lists on Topica. We are then to watch, without participating, in a topic that is of interest to both myself and at least one other member of our team, for a period of one week.
Sounds simple enough.
But my first problem was I had problems straight away when I enlisted for a topic I was told I could not do it untill I had confirmed my new membership through a confirmation email I had been sent. I checked my inbox of my email but there was nothing so clicked on a link to have them send it to me again, just in case they hadn't actually done it. Checked my inbox again - nothing! I must of done this four times before it occurred to me that my email might be sending the confirmation emails straight to spam. So I checked my Spam folder and there they all were.
This problem sorted I went looking for a topic of interest.
Second problem? Everything was out of date. The latest discussion I could find was last written at the start of last year but most dated back to about 2005/2006.
How could we observe an active discussion if none of the discussions were actually active?
When this was asked at our last team meeting Craig suggested we just read the old discussions and observe it that way.
But it still leaves me thinking :-
Is there a more up to date discussion list we could join to do this activity? and if not there should be.
Could we make the discussions active again by posting a comment ourselves to get it going?