I agree with the "alpha male" comment...

In my opinion, the issue has to do mostly with the forum contents than with the new format, actually, forum discussion quality started to decline way before the new format was put in place. Yes the economy is bad, there might be less new products, still no explanation for irrelevant topics, discussions and uncalled for comments.I posted a comment on a thread over two years ago on an unrelated topic, but it does apply to this one perfectly, it was:

"There are very experienced people on this forum who can contribute a lot to the growth of the newcomers, and as time goes by, there is less and less contributions on their part, I feel that's because some of the newbies use the forum as their "facebook" and post everything they do and comes to mind during the day that has no relevance to the continuous development of the forum, you do not see the experts who can teach us do this!, that's not what the forum is for and I believe may be the reason for less and less postings from those we can learn a lot from, it may be becoming the environment they do not want to be a part of"

I wonder how the contributions of the top 3 members with the most posts in the last 36 months relate to the perception of the forum today...

Force field on...