I know there is 1 user in particular that has started putting me off using the site as much. He just completely derails and ruins almost every thread he's involved with.

I've mentioned it in ModChat and they're discussing it, I've not been following the events too closely, I've been so pre-occupied with my own thread (Xbox Empire) + US Politics + Russia/Ukraine War but discussion is being had from what I can see and it will be taken care of.

Hah, so ya tried that already. Welp. I mean if ResetERA users and NeoGAF users knew that things aren't the same over here, they'd migrate. But there's no way to let them know. 

I've also pushed bringing more Mods onboard, I will admit that the Mod team has equally been a bit coasting lately, low activity as the site feels on auto-pilot so I hope to do a few things that could bring more liveliness back to the team, so that's what we're doing on our part.  I have a number of users in mind and I will be PMing those just to see if they're interested but not to say that they've got it for sure.

The way I see it though, is that there are multiple issues.

1. The site owner has completely abandoned the site, aside from paying to keep it running, it is on autopilot. How are we meant to fix technical issues the site has, how are we meant to keep the site updated with a modern/fresh look, how are we meant to provide enticing new features to the website, how are we meant to stay on-top of the ad issues, how are we meant to advertise the website, how are we meant to create a mobile version of the website that actually works, if we have to rely entirely on unpaid volunteer work from users we have to find at random by desperately asking around if anyone has any coding experience and if they can take time out of their lives and work to help us out...And from what I've been told over the years, under the hood of VGChartz it's pretty messy so it would take someone months to work their way around it anyway.

2. However, even if those issues were fixed, sites like VGChartz are a dying breed and they're all struggling to grow, aside from sites that ripped users from an already large website in a split off (I.E. ResetEra from Neogaf) but if you were to create a brand new forum website nowadays, you'd probably be called crazy. What is the incentive to join VGChartz over the much larger ResetEra or NeoGaf? Or Reddit? Even Discord is heavily hurting these types of communities now. What is the USP of VGChartz? The GameDB? GameFaqs has that, it's more updated and barely anyone uses VGChartz's GameDB with only a few users heroically keeping it up to date, Lol. The sales numbers? We had to dump sale tracking for games because it was completely inaccurate due to the rise in digital.

VGChartz also comes from the age of "console wars" due to our focus on hardware tracking, nowadays the console wars are all but dead due to PlayStation dominating Xbox and Switch essentially being its own thing and people realising that being a console warrior is a bit sad, I don't think the younger generation gives a shit about "console wars" which is what VGChartz was born on. So VGChartz needs a new USP and it has struggled to find one Imo. It's still nice to have hardware tracking but I think in light of how sales have gone the past generation that people are caring less and less about it.

3. If we want more activity then everyone needs to chip in, I don't know how to encourage that though. I've too often seen in the past like 1-2 users making 90%+ of the threads. Though I would also point out that (and it's no fault of his) but Trunks manages to post news articles way before anyone is able to make a thread and thus discussion has slowly moved towards articles instead, in a way, the articles are directly competing with the forums. There's not much we can do about that, aside from hope people make more original threads (u'know like that Mafia stuff, or just fun questions/debates). I did make a suggestion one time that when Trunks makes an article there should be a little button which he can click that also generates it into a thread, Lol.

Yep. That's a lot. Should be thankful the place is standing at all. 

Gaming has never been bigger as it is now and there's plenty of games coming and currently in development, enough for chatter of all types of genres and platforms.

I think the popularity of forums has dwindled due to the changes of the last several years thanks to social media changing (Discord, Instagram, X/Twitter, Reddit, etc).

A lot of people moved on for different reasons. Its been like what....10+ years since the forum was super active. A lot has changed in the last 10 years, even for me - graduated from school, married, had a child, bought a house, etc. I'm sure its if not the same, similar experiences for others.

I remember making threads - it was whenever an announcement for a new game was released. I would put a picture, copy a line or two from the source, put my opinion piece and link the source, I remember being called a Nintendo fanboy, Sony fanboy and a PC fanboy at different times, was quite funny looking back at it now.

I dont really have the time or patience to post threads so I just hang out in the nation threads....ironic considering I complained about how the nation threads pretty much killed off conversations outside of those threads for gaming related discussions back when the threads were mainly political, off topic....I dont even go to the hot topics or forum index as much anymore so I guess its probably the same as it was years ago.

(I check my VGChartz buddy lol)

No, they wouldnt.

If anything, you'll probably get one or two people from there if you are lucky.

ResetERA is mainly a extremist left leaning website and NeoGAF in its current form is a extremist right leaning website.

These sites are built and designed like hiveminds because thats what they are. If one person says something that goes opposite of the rest of the site says, they will either be banned or trolled to the point where they will be forced to leave because they wouldnt be able to handle the mental stress. Imagine being trolled by someone here, thats just one person but multiply it by 100 or more.

Its the reason why there's so many splinter/spinoff sites from people who visited ResetERA who no longer are there. The PC community got cut by more than half and they have their own website or are active on Discord. Apparently the asian community was pushed off as well and a lot of people left cause of some drama that happened a while back. I've seen some people saying that they cant bear being on the site anymore because the conversations are getting too much for them.

It sucks that there's no inbetween - I guess you could say this place is the closest to it.

Only reason why I go on ResetERA is mainly for announcements and stuff for gaming, anime, movies, tech. I dont post on there as much as I used to - the first 5 years I was really active but over this past 6 or so months, my activity dwindled and I'm mostly lurking because you never know what you say could get you banned at any point.

Like new words, new terms or simply agreeing to someone (who has a different point of view) can get you banned.

If I remember right...I think my last ban was I said I would rather have another texas winterstorm freeze over a hot boiling summer - so I said either situation leads to power loss, might as well be during the freeze where you can bundle yourself with clothes, sweaters, blankets to keep warm over the boiling summer where even if you got butt naked you'll be cooked if there's no AC, fans, or any type of cooling.

I said that and I got banned because what I said was "insensitive" - mind you this is me going through BOTH the texas winterstorm from years ago and going through an entire outage of power during hurricane season in the past.

After going through Hurricane Beryl last month and not having power for 2 days in a house with a elderly woman and a 2 month old child - ya...I'd rather take the freeze than go through 100+ degree weather like I did last month.

Oh I know exactly what ERA and GAF are. What if you could tell the ones that are getting banned (Which are the sensible ones) that there's a nice cosy spot over here away from that nonsense. Why do ya go back? It's like some social experiment that's gone completely wrong. Sure ya can get news on Twitter...  not that that place is much better in it's own way.

This. Discord/Reddit/Twitter has fucked forums.

The majority of people on forums like VGChartz/ResetEra/NeoGaf are those who have been on those forums already for years, ResetEra is lucky in that it was an off-shoot from the biggest gaming forum on the internet, Lol. If you tried to make an entirely brand new forum website nowadays with no connection to ResetEra, it would probably fail. People have changed, moved on with their lives, as you said, but a lack of new users are coming in and the console wars are over. Younger generation is all about TikTok/Discord, Reddit, Lol.

VGChartz is still primarily a videogame forum, as is ResetEra. But ResetEra will always be more well known and then I ask, if someone has a choice between ResetEra or VGChartz, why would they pick VGChartz if gaming is what you care most about? ResetEra is way more active, they post news way quicker than us, they even have news that originate from themselves and their insiders, Lol, ResetEra also looks nicer both desktop and mobile and works better. The main reasons I can think of as to why someone would pick VGChartz over ResetEra (or Reddit/Discord) is because you actually prefer a much smaller community and it's easier to sign up to.

I mainly use Twitter for auto notifications from Wario64 whenever some tech or gaming deal happens.

For gaming, I usually go to Gematsu for news articles or Reddit's GamingLeaks sub forum for leaks.

But Resetera like Ryuu mentions has insiders, faster input of news, etc - there's a lot of stuff that are not mentioned in Gematsu or any one other source mainly because you got hundreds of people who flock to the site to post news of whatever event like its some sort of competition so its the fastest way to get a hold of any type of information in regards to gaming and non-gaming as well.

If I remember right, a major game announcement was made few months ago - about 5-6 people posted a thread and they had to merge all the threads together so it was odd seeing the first 5-6 posts almost the same exact post lol.

I joined VGChartz on a whim (perhaps the database got me on hold), was looking at console sales data (while visiting another gaming forum and talking about sales there) - joined in 2011 when I realized this site had a forum lmao.

100% dedicated Forums are a dying form of communication just like how IRC was before forums became popular decades ago

Now you got the successor to IRC in the form of Discord and Reddit is a condensed forum like site with multiple venues for different types of discussions.

And with how much tech is changing and as new generations come in - less usage of older forms of communication will happen and more usage of newer quicker forms of communication will happen like TikTok, Instagram, etc.

Its the reason why you havent seen that many new people joining the site and the average age of even on ResetERA is above 30. I was surprised to see there were several people in their 40s, 50s and even 60s on ResetERA.

But then it dawned on me...I'm coming up as well even though I'm in my mid 30s. Aging sucks yo :(