Something is being done.

There's a lot of reasons for stagnating community, it really does have to do with not as many lurkers coming in, it hurts when they can't easily find the forum topics, the main reason I signed up back in the day was my constant browsing of the numbers and every time I hit the home page I'd see hot topics refresh, then one day I saw a silly discussion that made me want to post.

Back then we were not noticed that much by big mainstream internet groups, we were a small but excellent community, ran by some level headed mods that moderated with common sense, IE it was a bit stricter than it is now, cause being an obvious problem after your third ban or so they'd just permaban you.... with the exception of Leo-J and Soriku lol they spammed it up constantly but I think everyone enjoyed their bitter rivalry and how much fun it was to mess with Leo-J.

Getting back on track, we were a small exceptional community that was ever growing because of amazing members, making good topics, with good common sense moderation, and a good easy to understand design, even if the home page did become a bit cluttered.

Basically the decline happened with poor changes in moderation (even before MM476 became a mod) basically caving to the whining of a small group of users that it's "not right" for moderators to ban at their own discretion, so then an iron clad set of rules came about, then these small groups found loopholes, which were still banned for until something changed and moderation became less about common sense and more about strict wording of the rules, this does not work as just like anything people will lie straight to your face, thus these people will lie to get away with what they're posting and then moderators start to fail at doing their job which is protecting the community, this turned into a lot of fussing among the forums, good members complaining about the rules not being followed, bad members saying the good members didn't know what they were talking about.

Plainly speaking hostile environments aren't the best places to attract new members, it scares them away, cause two people fighting in a thread isn't discussion cause it isn't going anywhere. Basically the old members got tired of this cause they were of the older and more mature group, I know cause I for the most part discussed games and life outside of the forums with them and asked them why they wanted to leave. Then all of this was reinforced once VGC "hit it big" meaning the internet trolls that terrorize awful communities like N4G, Gamespot, and IGN started to notice VGC as well, and well with an already conflicted community, moderation having issues, and fights happening all the time in the forums, it was rather easy for them to just walk right in and start growing in number and call themselves productive members, this perpetuated things more where older members started to drop like flies or relegate themselves to certain forums usually off topic like kzasz cause they were tired of trying to make a logical point and it just turn into a fight, and I felt their pain cause they were the reason I came here.

Then the site change came, it knocked out a lot of the trolls unknowingly cause they couldn't post unless it was from a computer, but as MM has said it's not great for lurkers, and it really isn't IGN had the same issue with their site changes and their popularity has dropped as well. Basically the site design needs to be very open and casual friendly

Wii U will rock the next generation. Ignore the naysayers everyone!

The decline definitely has a lot to do with the lack of sales data and tools. VGchartz took most of these away and it was replaced by nothing. Those data and tools were the sole reason most people came to this place, and now that stuff is gone. It's a bizarre decision that obviously backfired.

I'm willing to bet that the console wars are what mainly bring people to VGchartz so they can track the sales and argue their points. Fanboys are probably the bread and butter of VGchartz because sales data gets them all riled up.

This generation is winding down and PS3 has little hope of outpacing the Xbox 360 before the Wii U closes out the generation. There's little to get people excited or angry and that's the kind of stuff that causes flame wars and heated discussion.

I think it's going to keep going downhill until the next generation is nearer. When MS and Sony announce the hardware specs of their next consoles and they start showing the games that will launch with them, that's when things will heat up again.

That was actually a thread I created!  And I did mention it in the OP.  ^^

And I can see changes to #2 making quite a bit of difference.  Even if it won't spur new site visitors to view the forums, it will at least help in retaining older users.  New visitors often don't make it to the forums because, as you said, the website is too fragmented, but that same issue affects the forums themselves, and it's partly why certain members (I can rattle off a list if necessary lol) have left.

And I wouldn't say site redesigns will always alienate our current userbase.  VGChartz 3.0 was met with almost universal hatred, but gamrConnect 2.0 was met with mostly praise.  So long as the changes don't come off as arbitrary or downright bad, things should go over well.

We actually have had plenty of official threads for games over the years.  The issue is that they're usually created months in advance of the release of a game, and get ignored or forgotten in favor of new threads containing new news about the game in question.

Gaf handles this very well.  Prior to the release of a game, new news gets new threads.  Official threads are only created one week before the release of a game, and that thread is used to discuss the game from there on out.  If an official thread is made prior to one week before a game's release date, it'll be locked.  This system works quite nicely.

Of course, once a thread has gotten on in years, it's perfectly fine to start making new threads about the game again, which is when "Late to the Party" threads start to pop up.

Though now that we have the ability to edit thread titles, official threads made well before the release of a game can work rather well.  For example, M.U.G.E.N.'s PlayStation Vita thread, which gets a title change whenever new news comes to light.

I agree with this to a degree.  I think in regards to flaming and whatnot, the current team is doing rather well.

However, I do think the mod team needs to start cracking down on topics that aren't thread worthy.   A thread like this doesn't necessarily break any rules, but on gaf it would've been locked, both for its absurdity and so that other, better threads can get more attention.

To quote gaf's member etiquette and inappropriate posts sections:

I also think moderators should do something about posters who can't type legibly.  The purpose of a forum is to facilitate discussion between its members.  Using barely understandable shorthand is directly in conflict with this idea.  In my opinion, if you can't make a post without using crap like "yrs" in place of "years", or if what you're trying to say is simply impossible to understand, you shouldn't be allowed to continue participating in a discussion.

I understand and respect those who do not natively speak English yet attempt to participate in discussion as best they can, and if anything they should be applauded for doing their best to learn new languages, but when you have someone from the US or UK who's using texting shorthand in their posts, it just shows they're not taking this seriously, and they should be removed from the site.

I think tackling these two areas helps clear out a lot of the riff-raff, so to speak.  Though neither is really an issue at the moment, given the low number of active posters these days, but they have been issues in the past.

I also like gaf's "don't be a dick" guideline:

That covers when people are just being assholes, but aren't directly insulting anyone.

Really, gaf doesn't have too many specific rules.  Mostly guidelines, and Evilore entrusts his mods to determine when people have become a hindrance to good discussion, and thus should be removed from the site.  Subsequently, he holds a very high standard for his moderators, each of which could probably make a good community manager in their own right.  Though he does have a much larger pool from which to select said moderators.

There are too many sub-forums. The website forum, for example, has four sub-forums: Announcements, Announce yourself, website info, and website feedback. It's useless when all four of them have one to two new threads a day. They should all be merged into one mega forum like old times. 

Same goes for the off-topic forum, there's six sub-forums. And while they're still more active than the website forums, they're not quite active enough to warrant having an individual board. They need to be merged into one forum.

I wouldn't have even found this thread if it wasn't for the hot topics section on Gamrconnect home. The layour is definitely an issue.

There are other problems like less news, older members leaving, and other reasons that have already been mentioned.

And as for the whole "moderators are too quick to label posts trolling" thing some of you have mentioned, I honestly haven't seen too many people banned lately, so I'm not sure how one could come to that conclusion.

But looking back at my early days of being a mod, I know I was yelling "troll!" left and right, often for things that are pretty obvious jokes to me now, or simply weren't trolling at all.  >_>

And I've since realized that all trolling isn't necessarily bad.  Most jokes would fall under your typical definition of trolling, but their intent isn't really malicious.

Really, I guess it's all about intent. To quote neogaf, yet again:

We should get rid of the rule that you have to be naked while you post.. that one is scaring people away...

That's actually part of the reason I'm still around.  >_>

When I posted in the "show yourself in underwear" thread, I actually had to put clothes ON for the picture.