first do what i suggested

I still think it was a mistake to deplatform the Nazis, but I'm happy to see stabilization, and a little bit of growth.

It always seems like my waking hours are when its dead as a graveyard and all the activity happens at night while I sleep.

It's 3:30pm here now for instance and there hasn't been a post in any of my followed threads for hours, nor do there tend to be any more during the evening, or until about 9pm AEST when I'm heading to bed.

I'm not sure why; I get that its late in Europe when I get up, but its morning there in my evening, and the US have their afternoon during my morning, so surely there must be some overlap, yet it feels like the whole world is asleep.

No it's just your threadsl but seriously as a fellow Australian,I see it as well the thing is different people come on at different times even when they are in the same timezone. some use mobile while at work others prefer night and some like me check in at various intervals during the day, alsio taking your Europe example it like Australia isn't made up of one uniform timezone.

I feel like there are simply many more forums these days where one can discuss videogames, and that's going to lead to declines. Not saying that's the only reason, but I think it's a big part.

Apparently this year has seen an uptick in the numbers  so if that holds it's a good sign .

This place deserves more traffic, let's hope the numbers keep going back up. The golden years were only golden in sheer numbers though, there was a lot more stupidity and petty fights in the forums, mods had a hard time keeping up. I think I banned 14 people in one day at some point when I was mod, and only two were alts.

didn't you ban johnlucas

No, I've never banned him, he wasn't really the kind of user that caused much trouble as I recall. Hasn't he been banned like two times in total? He chose to just leave the forums a good while ago.

I think the site needs to focus on thread quality; there is lack of compelling topics. There are too many:

*List threads
* Threads on the same topic over and over and over again (why did console that came out 20 years ago fail)
* General threads - Instead of asking a broad general basic question about Final Fantasy pick a Final Fantasy and create a thread some topic about it.

Here's the reality: When threads are made that go beyond these .. they are usually ignored. It is like anytime we are asked to read more than a sentence in OP or asked to do more in a post beyond listing something .. its like turn off.. on a forum about discussing video games. Raising thread quality will raise participation. There will no moment where the site will just magically flourish again. It will take effort from each member to turn the sire around.