I might be late to the disscution but would llike to put my thought on it.
I really love Forums i believe they are the best way of communicating compared to crap like Discord, sadly i have to admit that im only lurkling around from time to time.
Ive seen many Forum based communities die and its always for the same reason!
"WHY SHOULD I ENGAGE IN A CONVERSATION HERE"
First of all, i had a hard time to find a way to feel at home here, if youre new you think about the best way to make friends and thats were new people might feel intimidated. Seeing all the Seniors here knowing each other doesnt invite people to butt-in into the conversation. maybe opening a new thread and try to find people you can connect to through hobbies (In may case it backfired so i stopped to try to be active here).
Of course that is my experience and by no means it applies to everyone but thatrs something i noticed happening to many other across the internet.
Ive seen a Disscussion here about staff not doin anything whenever it is true or not but a communitiy is more then just the staff, if Members dont try to include new people ir dont engage in conversations with new Threads of different subforums then its a problem. take the Art forum here for example, if you dont get much of a reply or the only reply thats made is to nagg at your post then its no wonder people stop bein active.
A Forum is only as active as its members wants it to be.
Also many parts of this Forum are a mess, no one will join to talk about Naruto or DBZ alone and if you try to find some other anime threads you have to go through all that non important shitpost in between.
There is sure a lot to point out what goes wrong here from a bystander point of view but the Forum got a certain charm withc is why i at least drop by from time to time. before im finishing my little rant here and most likely vanish again, one little sidenote: Instead of watching a community die one should think about how can I BE OF HELP to breath new life into the community.
have a nice day everyone and stay civil.