Then what is the difference between what you're asking for and the way it is already?

Strong disagreement is already allowed, and always has been.

Yeah, I don't know what to say without examples, I'm pretty sure strong disagreement is already allowed for the most part, as long as you aren't being a dickhead about it, there's a difference as well between an argument getting heated and slowly escalating which may result in a Mod stepping in to cool things down, versus someone intentionally setting out to be antagonistic, that's called baiting, Lol.

Honestly, we could list out the dozens of reasons why the site is declining, and we could even come up with some solutions for a few of them, but it's likely too little too late and quite frankly, it's a complete waste of time, we've been through listing all these things before. Unless there is a massive change to VGChartz then there is no point even starting the conversation.

The site is going to die, that's a fact on our current course and there's nothing we can do to change it, I've given up on trying, there is something that would need to happen first for me to start giving a damn again and actually have some hope, even if it would still be likely to fail, until that thing happens, we're just going to keep going back to square one. Just enjoy the time we have left with the community we have and try to nurture that little flower and then we can all take lifeboats to either Discord or another site, Lol.

I think to really save it it would have to become something else.

Nothing lasts forever. At a point you just have to say its been a good run and let it die instead of trying to weekend at bernies it.

Things have gotten exceptionally bad to the point I think the forums are about to topple on their last legs. Only Curl-6 is making threads regularly and those are getting piss Al engagement.

If a few of us made a pledge to make one interesting thread per week we could get soke momentum. I'd be making threads but I'm down and out atm. What would really liven things up is some review threads, like 7 big games the past few days and days coming but no one is putting up an aggregate thread for discussion of those games, bad or good regardless.

If anybody wants to be friends on FB, hit me up.

Yeah, i appreciate the effort from Curl-6.    

Unfortunately, vgchartz is one of the few video game forums that even has a politics section.  Most shy away from it and want us to be kind of one-dimensional i guess, just talk about games lol.   

I appreciate the years that Vgchartz has been here and hope we can find a new home on the internet to have discussions with in the future.  I'm on reddit but it's not a community in the same way that this website is.  I'll never recognize a person a say hi to them, or wish them a good day.  

Would anybody have suggestions as to other online forums?   Ryu, please turn a blind eye to this       

You don't have to worry about me, I'm not going to moderate anyone for talking about alternative forums, why should I punish people to protect this website when the owner himself shows so little interest in the website? There was a user once who got banned for attempting to create a rival site and poach users from this website, I'm thinking he should have been successful.

InstallBase is probably VGChartz's closest equivalent in the sense that it is focused on sales data discussion, unfortunately that's all it's focused on so it's not viable for me and I won't be signing up, as it doesn't have anything but sales related discussion, so no general gaming chat, or TV/Film chat, which is a shame because if it did I would probably sign up there.

What I will say is the fact that Install Base has been open for a few years and is already getting as much sales related discussion as VGChartz whilst only being about sales discussion is an embarrassment to VGChartz (and a credit to InstallBase) and it won't be long before InstallBase is the #1 website for sales related discussion.

When VGChartz dies I imagine a few users from here will join InstallBase, or move to Discord, I expect some will give up on forums entirely, some will move to ResetEra or r/Reddit discussions. There are some forums which are specific to certain platforms but I'm not a fan of places like that, it feels too specific and isolated, things like XboxEra and FamiBoards (Nintendo). Both are Affiliates of InstallBase.

Also to clarify, I like InstallBase, I've not checked Famiboards, even though I'm not a member of IB, they seem chill there, I'm envious they have an owner who cares, also a former VGChartz member and guy I still speak to, is a Staff Member of InstallBase, Lol. I'd like if they became friendly rivals to sort of encourage VGChartz to step up but that won't happen on the current path.

I'm probably just going to chill on Discord once VGChartz dies and not bother with gaming forums.

As somebody who’s relatively new to this site (I say “relatively” b/c I know there are ppl here who have been active for nearly two decades lol), I am genuinely curious: Why do you say that it is an inevitability the site will be dead soon? The site seems no different from 2023 than today. I haven’t seen many people leaving, though I admittedly also haven’t seen many new faces. And what is this “trajectory” Ryuu96 is talking about? Is this in reference to monthly active users or something else? I, for one, love how niche and tight-knit the community is here. It’s not like Reddit where you have a massive sea of users (most of which you’ll likely only ever see one time). On VGChartz, I can go to any forum or merely look at a profile picture, and I know exactly who I’m talking to. It’s refreshing and very therapeutic for people like me who have…a particular socializing disorder I don’t want to share lol.

Yeah it really feels like Curl is the piece of thread holding up the forums from approaching death's door at this point so Curl I'll say that like shavenfurret that I also appreciate all the effort you're still putting in to keep activity going, you have to be by far the most valuable general user here these days. I made a thread a few weeks ago about a massive topic that only got a few replies so I dunno how much more I'll bother with making threads going forward.

Things were in a decent place the first half of this year with all the Switch 2 speculation and discussion but with its record breaking launch now months old, the Switch 1 having faded fast tanking the odds of it beating the PS2 and the PS5 and Xbox Series having peaked years ago video game sales data in general has gotten a lot less interesting lately. When political related threads are increasingly often getting way more activity than threads related to video games and their sales you know that things aren't looking good for a forum about video game sales data.

It's not all bad though since I do really like the tight knit feel of things, it's pretty cozy and I miss the days of the internet when forums were huge before social media ruined things so I'll keep coming here often until things become outright dead which will hopefully not happen before this decade is over.