Undoubtedly. For one thing, and granted the crack addicted Active User Lists the last year or two at wotmania made an apples to apples comparison impossible, but I'm not sure there are even half as many people logged in as during even the hey day I remember. And I only saw a little less than half of THAT. In the case of those users there's a LOT less activity. How many starred threads have you seen...?

People interacting in positive ways, forming and developing relationships. Precious few have been formed thus far, and that's understandable since just about everyone here already knows everyone else here at least slightly. New SNs have probably inhibited that a bit, at least at first. The biggest and hopefully temporary problem, IMHO, is what afflicted wotmania at the end: A lot of irreplaceable people have left, and very few have arrived to provide different but still unique and irreplaceable members. I think I've seen ONE bona fide newb; everyone else I thought might be was either someone under a new SN or a lurker coming out of the shadows. Though that last is a good thing, no question, but people usually lurk for a reason, so how long they'll be posting is anyones guess.

Well, I think activity even among regulars is generally down, and it seems inevitable at least some of what we're seeing is whistling in the dark. Loss of long time members has a cascade effect; if enough of the people you come for stop coming, your reasons to come start to diminish (superfluous )

In terms of stimulating activity among regulars, as little attention as the Stock Exchange itself got, I think the points system or something similar could help, and certainly wouldn't hurt. Think about it:

You got points every time you logged in to the site.

You got points every time a Theory was accepted.

You got points for wotscars.

You got points for trading with other people (which typically meant talking with them. )

You got points for point whoring, which also typically meant talking.

The point of points wasn't points, after all, even for the whores.

I've been thinking since near the first mentions of RAFO something similar if not the same might be good encouragement for quality and quantity of posts. The suggestions I made in the Suggestions Box was something like a monthly (for the first year, anyway) thread where peoples names could be submitted (much like the wotscars) and the Admins could choose from among them the member with the most posts, or the most insightful, or the most humorous, or the most courteous, or the most informative to receive some special award. Something desirable, motivating, but that didn't grant permanent status in itself and wasn't subject to abuse, like Admin for a Day, or a month of expanded html privileges, or multiple links in posts, expanded sig space, special fonts to their names or in posts. Even just a permanently Announced thread with the names of those singled out by their peers for their contributions, ideally for those made in positive site building ways.

In terms of recruitment there's not much more to say or do except "tell all your friends. " We definitely need to take advantage of the upcoming TGS release, and BEFORE it's released (as in YESTERDAY!) We need established content, established analysis, established discussions and established posters. Hell, maybe WE can be, at least partly, the site where WoT newbs come to ask the done to death questions like who killed Asmo and what is the Song. I remember when I first came to wotmania I lurked for a month or two precisely because there were topics I wanted to discuss with a knowledgeable readership, but DIDN'T want to hear "Yeah, there were three threads with hundreds of posts on that five years ago; learn to use the Search, n00b!" It's a non-issue here, because there IS no five years ago.

Outside of WoT, well, c'mon, people: You're GEEKS! You HAVE other geeky interests, and this is one of the few safe havens in your life to discuss them, enjoy them with others who have the same fetishes (please no (more) Narg slash fiction.... ) Roll with the new focus and do something I haven't: Explore the SF/Fantasy Board beyond WoT. See what books others are talking about that you love. And what books others have read but aren't talking about; my best friend JUST started one of my all time favorite series, and while it's inevitable I'll be discussing it with him elsewhere, it's natural to do it here, too, and I know for a fact others here have read it because they said so.

Not sure what to say; this isn't my area of expertise, and I don't think there's a magic bullet here anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a year or more of growing pains before the long term portrait of RAFO becomes more visible and firm. I do know this: By hook or by crook, RAFO needs more people. NEW people. I think a language filter would be a good idea precisely for this reason: Many well known and well beloved wotmaniacs wouldn't be here and couldn't have stayed there without a language filter, because outside of school (where unfiltered sites are blocked) and home (where many parents block unfiltered sites) they didn't have internet access. I won't name names because some folks are self conscious about age, but everyone reading this can think of MANY such people, people without whom wotmania and RAFO would both be far less. Without whom our lifes would be far less rich. We didn't get the last of them, but if we want many more we'll have to be accessible to them.

Maybe, but I doubt it. Long term I think that might be a good thing, because most people are obsessively into some things and not others, and RAFO like wotmania will almost certainly have many people legendary on one board and barely known on others. I mean, if you never went to the WoTMB (strange as that sounds) how often did you see linda_sedai, or M2k, or Salty? During my time sid was probably the most active WoTMBer on the CMB, but even that was episodic because his focus was elsewhere, contributing more indispensable things than I can name.

Yeah, all I got. I dunno, maybe some crosslinking with more other sites would help, but we'd need links there; linking to them won't help us much because the only people who'll see it are people already here. I know Jason over at Dragonmount changed the redirect there to conform to, well, pretty much every criticism made of the original. And its successor. Considering he didn't have to put ANY redirect, and considering the bulk of the response was complaints at how he did it until he altered it, then MORE complaints, I'm rather impressed by the classy way he behaved. Something else that would help us is the same attitude toward other sites that we need toward each other: Respect, civility and courtesy, ESPECIALLY when we disagree.