Butch, like Bob you have a good bead on the effects. No-one new, no-one young, people moved on.
It's the cause I'm calling out, and I'll be the one to take the faeces for doing it in plain language.
There is a vibrant culture of O Scalers out there across all the generations. Where I live and how we operate has made it abundantly clear to me. I see 'em all the time.
You mention OGR getting thin on the ground. OGR is too arrogant. How they pitched Bob off over his perfectly appropriate protection of his intellectual property shows an incredible lack of understanding of the very basics of what they pretend to know so much about. I think I'm ok to say that since, back in the early days of OST, Joe and I both took some copyright law for publishers coursework to understand what most model railroad magazine personnel pretend to know about yet know surprisingly little, OGR leading the pack on ignorance at full volume. Bob got badly treated as did many others in various ways, then adding the new subscription requirements and rather moronic moderation created an uncomfortable restrictive environment for all but the most thirsty of the Kool-aide quaffers. Their lack of participation problem, unlike MTJ, is inflicted upon that forum on a management level.
MTJ we've already covered. The reputation is all anyone tells me puts them off, not utility, not picture hosting. Folks want to talk about their hobby, not to discuss what they feel is ruining life and to pillory their fellows because they find it makes them feel powerful. Such negativity is a powerful deterrent.
What's left is the Faecesbook site. If you think photo hosting is a pain in the arse here, try doing a thread search there. Seriously clumsy and dam near un-searchable. The photos are far more constrained in their space allocation on F'book than here as well. But it thrives; multi-generational, good modelling, friendly, subject-focussed, enthusiastic. The owner's rules are reasonable and well understood, neither vicious anarchy nor hamfisted authoritarianism. It's the mood that's attractive. Enjoying a hobby, not viciousness, politics, vindictiveness, the antisocial media.
I'm also on a few car forums. If yours is dying, there is a reason it's unattractive and it ain't age. Mine aren't perfectly Barbi and Ken but they are for the most part lively.
You guys want more folks here? They are out there doing "forum" stuff over on Facebook. They won't come here if they aren't made welcome, and the biggest elephant in that room is Club Car. There are three times the number of posts there than in all the other sub-forums combined. That means people come here to brawl, and what O Scale hobbiest wants to be associated with that.
The owner could just separate it from the rest of the forum and make it a forum onto itself if he can't bring himself to kill it. Call it Mudpit or something. Everyone who grooves on politics and such can try to drive each other away and win the internet. Once it's gone, a few conditions of use from the owner (which has nothing to do with Constitutional Law let alone principles mistakenly applied to an international venue; the internet isn't just American) and see if the forum can recover in the modelling community such that folks will feel welcome to come here.
And that includes me. I'm surprised the jackals haven't come over here to give me a good goin' over for being so un-american as to criticise their exercising their God given Constitutional rights (Yeah. On a model train hobby forum, no less), if I'm honest.
