@dxs New topics are created when added to a question. So, if for example, you asked a question about parenting (and it wasn’t already a topic) and put parenting as a topic for the question, it would then be a topic on Fluther. The admins of Fluther want the topics to stay on point because that is what guides the question recommendations for users, so there was a team set to clean up the topics and organize them. The mods will clean up topics in questions if they are out of hand (such as putting just random things that aren’t really appropriate) in order to keep them organized and functioning well.