I'm gonna play devil's advocate and side with Rowan here.

While I wouldn't say that it's our responsibility to reactively, proactively, and retroactively breathe life into these forums as none of us are being paid to do this, I will agree that our absence is certainly jarring for any new members who wander in and only see a couple people posting. At this point in time, our entire moderation team could be one person and we'd still survive so long as that one person manages to come on and deal with bots now and again. It's that knowledge that has certainly impacted the frequency of my own visits which, candidly, is a really shitty non-motivator.

I'm not going to sit here and write out another "I promise to do better" post. I can't and won't make that promise. Now, if we want to consider another rebrand... obviously, Final Fantasy is our core and without rebranding the entire website, that cannot really change. But we can simplify and streamline the forums once more. Reduce clutter and broaden our horizons again. Attempt to capture a broader audience by resuming news posts - I can add more users to the usergroup with news posting rights, and we can do away with the guidelines for how articles are written. We can work as a collaborative unit to share news about anything videogame-oriented that excites us, rather than sticking solely to SQEX and JRPG news.

But it all boils down to volunteer work. How much time do you have on your hands? I sit in traffic anywhere from 95-210 minutes per day thanks to the glorious delight that is Portland Metro traffic. Time that I spent on the internet, including this lovely place, is now spent behind the wheel. And it's been that way for me for over two years now. Was I already faltering in my visits back then? Yes. Do I often think about this place and how I should log in and post? Also yes. And if any of you can say yes to the prior rhetorical question, maybe that's all it takes. Hell, if we can even just pick a single day of the week to remember to come in, say hello, and post something fresh, that alone could be enough to prod at that activity meter just a bit. It has to start somewhere.

But, Rowan, the others aren't wrong either. By and large, most forums are dead simply because they lack the flexibility and infrastructure of Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Everyone wants bite-sized information.