That's for sure.

Indeed. We were used to that (to the point of preferring this system, for some) but it's always been a big obstacle for many who posted at TL/Dragonmount. In WOT discussions here it favored a lot tangential discussions with frequent circular debates.

I quite agree with that. This was never a favored option with those who mostly visited WMB or OF, and more with those who came mostly to Wotmania as wide-ranging social site.

Neither do I. I wouldn't put the blame on RAFO for this. It was a valuable effort, but one made extremely difficult by the bad timing (Jordan dying etc.). On the WoT side Jason's considerable efforts to expand and rejuvenate Dragonmount and make all but the official WOT site (which worked) after while Mike here lost interest in Wotmania had already done the damage. By the time Ben finally took things in hands, it was already too late to hope that the WMB section could ever regain its reputation and attractive power, and want it or not it was through WOT that people first came to the site and joined the community (or not). It was also late to re position the site as a Spec. Fic. lit. site (without massive, massive efforts to get it off the ground), when the focus had already shifted toward Blogs where the owner could do things exactly as desired without dealings with tedious and time-consumming MB politics. It might have been different had Mike passed the reins as soon as he grew disinterested, before the decline of the site.

I've seen firsthand a bit how much Wotmania's attraction had decreased with the massive (and fast) success of Linda's WOT blog. The same republished articles that had attracted a few hundred views at Wotmania in years suddenly were read by thousands and soon tens of thousand. With Mike taking his distance Wotmania had slowly but surely more or less cast itself out of the global WOT online community, much like the smaller WOT sites like Tar Valon.net.