Lack of new people is killing the backroom and the entire forum

[Lysimachus]

Come on guys, is it that hard to discuss something without throwing insults at each other? I mean, i've hardly been on this forum for long so i'm not familiar with what you're discussing right now, but surely you can be a bit more respectful.

Can anyone fill me in on this or is the topic merely what the thread says, in that the backroom doesn't have enough interesting topics and people?

[Ibn-Khaldun]

The lack of posts/threads in a OT subforum should not mean that the entire forum is dying.
Backroom is just a little subforum. Who cares if no one posts there?
The main point for this forum is to give people the chance to discuss over the Total War games.

And I agree with Lysimachus here. Don't you know how to discuss something without throwing insults at each other?

[pevergreen]

Ibn, over the last few years, you can't deny that the activity levels have dropped over the entire forums.

Most of the long time members are only here because of the non-total war sub-forums.

I came around the launch of M2TW. When that was released, the activity was huge. ETW and NTW, nothing compared to it. Even the pre-release of S2TW is less talk than the lead up to ETW.

Less people are coming here, I really do believe the largest influx of people in the last few years has been from other forums, to play mafia.

[drone]

New people would help a lot. One of the problems is that the old-timers are tired of having the same arguments over and over again. There are only so many times you can write a quality post to a gunbortion thread, and most members already know everyone else's talking points.

My on the Backroom decline:

Bush leaving office 1/20/09. His administration was worth at least one quality thread a day. His "wars" and the other proxy conflicts drove a lot of discussion. Not much hot going on right now, even though there is a lot of cold conflicts and maneuvering under the surface.

Obama taking office and the ensuing media lovefest. The liberal media took it easy on him (at least for a while), while for the most part the conservative media went on a continuous, ugly rant about socialism, with veiled racism on the side, instead of just blasting his policies with decent arguments and good reporting. USA-related Backroom threads at this point changed, with liberals (US version) on the defense while the conservatives went into attack mode, this generally doesn't make for good conversation. And to the last...

US-centricity. It's not that having a very large percentage of USians is a bad thing, but frankly our news media is craptastic and interesting, compelling storylines don't get much play over here. It's hard for us to start good topics if we aren't aware of them. One of the main draws for me in the "old days" was the threads about stuff the US media either ignores, hides, or is just plain incompetent about. AdrianII, Tribesman, etc. used to find stories with all kinds of cool slants to them.

So, yes, I blame the Backroom decline on Obama.