Professor,
The Forum has Administrators and Moderators who make sure things stay reasonably well within certain set perameters. They have the ability to move threads, lock threads, edit posts, etc.
As to 'WHO' they are, a little search will give you the usernames for the admins in the Forum Info. The mods I have not seen a list of but we know at least one of them is a regular contributor here on the forum. I will let him reveal himself if he so desires.
He could move and clean up the matter of having two threads with the same topic in separate area if he thought it was beneficial to the discussion.
Have a Great Day, Brent