I think it's all in the title of this thread, forums ARE in decline, you will be hard pressed to find any that are improving year on year,

and it IMHO, all comes down to that great human falibility, of the grass always being greener, and as pointed out earlier in the thread, it is SO much easier to be online nowadays, malware aside, there are now in excess of one BILLION PC's using the internet, all due to broadband helping to make the experience so much more immersive,

and forums are anything BUT immersive, here we can ask, and answer questions.
two dimensional at its most annoying

Social networking sites will too, have had their day in the sun soon, as the latest and greatest comes along, as people are fickle in the extreme, the only things I believe any human can be reliably expected to stick to come what may, are cigerettes :shock:

but they have allowed an entire generation to get online and generate absolute GARBAGE, things that we [forums] will routinely delete as SPAM or worse, with usernames and accounts also being chopped away to help keep the forums FOCUS on ..........

I am admin on several forums, each one different in style content size and popularity, but all connected by the downturn in forum usage

something that will never now, be returned

Oh yeah, been away a year and what a shitty year it has been too, now sitting here with a badly fractured knee, and a trashed motorcycle, single handedly trying to up the post count on every forum I am on