Maybe ILS is stealing members.
Seriously though, I'm sure ILS has something to do with it as the split happened back in November and several of the people who went over were big posters in the book and game forum.
ILS is hardly "stealing" members. It is a VERY small forum, and the traffic at ILS is no where near the difference in traffic here.
Neither is there a false dichotomy of ILS and SGU. There are plenty over there that do not post here, but there is plenty of crossover as well.
At the risk of treading on toes here, It sure would be nice if the ILS exiles would come back. The moderation excesses of that time are way in our rearview and things are fine now. Dunno if this has been tried already but anyone in a position to put a friendly hand out might want to consider doing so.
This has been tried, and everyone that posts solely at ILS is well aware that they can come back at any time. It is a dead horse, and really isn't worth going over again, sadly.
I have noticed lately that we jump down the throat of the new poster who shows up to criticize the show. I've done it, and I've seen others do it. I'm not sure we should stop, but it probably chases off people. I would encourage people to greet and take interest in a nice way when people introduce themselves.
Like it or not, there is a pretty well established community here. If someone comes in and essentially bitches about how shitty the place is in their first post, they will be flamed.
This is a web forum, and if someone can't be bother to exercise standard netiquette then they will get jumped up and down on. Pretty standard form, really.
If you think the current forum is "hard" on newcomers, it is nothing compared to when Paul Ganssle, IRON MAN, a3maniac, Orthodox Infidel et al were posting here. The number of shitty arguments people get away with now is staggering compared to when they were around. Punches were NEVER pulled for the sake of being nice, and the current community is as soft as a bunny comparatively.
It is next to impossible to pinpoint the how or why forum traffic has decreased without knowing detailed Podcast subscription information. Has the number of Podcast subscriptions increased, decreased or stagnated over the same period? My guess would be option b or c, the growth the SGU has seen was too fast to be maintained.
