A bunch of reasons have led to the decline.
-forums aren’t as popular as they once were. As people get older and gain more responsibilities, they have less time to do their hobbies and therefore are less likely to spend time discussing those hobbies online and younger people prefer social media so you don’t have enough new people to replace the ones that “age out”.
-This is a site dedicated to sales and the industry has gotten a lot more secretive over the years and switched to reporting things like revenue & engagement. On top of that, the growth of digital has made tracking physical sales pretty useless and we no longer get leaks. It’s hard to discuss sales data when there’s not a lot of data to discuss.
-Site isn’t mobile friendly. I’m not just talking about the ads but it’s such a pain in the ass to use the tools/charts, there is no top/bottom of page button while scrolling through threads, the weird empty void if you scroll sideways, quoting is weird, etc. Things longtime users can possibly overlook but I have a hard time seeing many new people visiting the site and deciding to stay. Places like ResetERA or Installbase are much easier to navigate.
-Lack of trolls. A bit of a catch 22 as obviously the moderation team and staff want civil discussion and can’t just let a bunch of shit starters run around unchecked but those shit starters are the ones who created a lot of discussion. As annoying as members like Lawlight or Quickrick were, you can’t deny they got people talking.
I’m not really sure there is anything that can be done to reverse the decline, I feel any type of change is too little, too late. Sure, we will probably continue to see periodic surges in activity when something major happens like new hardware but then things will go back to normal and get quiet again while slowly fading into oblivion.
When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.
