Quote Originally Posted by gute View Post
I know some of the well known members quit visiting/participating because of the quality of participants (hopefully I'm not one of "those people") and the focus of the site, topics.
Yeah, I sorta got that vibe and I always hope I'm not one of "those people" too. I try and include links to academic papers to make up for it but what can you do? Not everyone will be interested in the same topics.

All great sites wax and wane, or simply wane after periods of intense interest. I can't think of one site I regularly visit that has the same traffic as in years past.

People get tired of social media, the time committment becomes too much, there is so much competition for eyeballs (look at War on the Rocks and the Infinity Journals), and specialist sites sometimes become overrun by people like me (sorry), outsiders that may ruin it a bit for specialists.

Regular commenters often want to start their own sites too which is the natural function of serial commenting, you start to imagine your own site dedicated to your own interests and with the sorts of participants you want.