They are very useful and autolovepon automatically creates discussion threads which I think will help keep the sub alive.
Roboragi linkes the anime mentioned to MAL and other sites which is super neat and useful.
2 points
I mostly participated in episode discussions on r/, but I feel I did benefit from other threads there, e.g. hearing news about new shows, getting linked to new official PV / posters, etc. I don’t think you need to restrict it to episode discussions only, but do it as you like.
One thing I think the mods there did right was limiting random chit-chat overall by keeping them in the weekly chat threads so the sub feels mostly on-topic and not too chaotic.
