After thinking about your fan fiction thread, I have to say I think the beauty of fan fiction - and yes, even teenage girl fan fiction - is that people who don't consider themselves writers are so engaged in what they are reading or involved in that they make the leap from passive bystander to active writer. I occasionally teach writing classes at a local community college and so this interests me a great deal. It's really an incredible thing to see people so vested in something. Now, yes, you have all sorts of other issues that can't be ignored (copyrights, infringing on someone else's creations), but even so, it is a compliment to the original writer.
I think, too, these forums are brilliant because there's so much literary value here. We probably all remember those terrible lectures we had to endure in high school and college about literary criticism, but these forums represent literary criticism in practice - and surprisingly, we all enjoy it. Literary criticism is really about the search for meaning and dissecting the merits and tools an author uses...we are awesome. BAM.