My personal observation is that there has been a great deal of 'brain drain' due to personal squabbles, turf battles, power struggles, and one-upmanship.
The reason the forum did so well back in 2013 and prior was because a group of very talented and experienced people were regular contributors. After this, the best and brightest were forcibly removed publicly, or asked to leave, or were 'phased out'. (not to say there are none left who are not amazingly talented and contributing)
When the innovators and the successful ones left, the forum lost a lot. Those individuals were replaced by new ones (like myself) who can never replace those individuals in knowledge or experience.
Like highflyer said, the forum has much of the same question and answers over and over as new members come. This if fine, but if the forum is to thrive, then pondmeisters with a medium amount of knowledge need someone to challenge them to bring it to the next level. Or if they want to do something unorthodox, they need someone else to come along side who might have done that before to help encourage or point out where things might go wrong.
Several who have willingly signed off have done so because of this exact issue. They feel that they can contribute to new comers (they can tell them how to stock their new pond in XX state) but no one can help them grow their knowledge or advise on a new solution to their unique problem. So they aren't upset about leaving, but just wish the forum could continue to grow with their growing knowledge base.
I'm not trying to be critical, but I think each of us could come up with a dozen names of the real contributers to this forum who have been asked or have chosen to leave.
I think we should ask the question of how do we remake this forum that would allow them to feel welcome again? Is there no second chances or amnesty in the pondboss world?
Looking forward to getting to a feeling that we are at a family reunion that still has ALL the generations of the family clan coming together rather than only the younger ones coming for the free food.
Canyon did you ever hit the head on the nail.... I can think of a few that were asked to leave and a few that said this is b s@@@t and have given up.... its up to the remaining to re- patriot those back into the family
