What do you people think makes a forum die? Mine (Siggy) died around april 07 for no reason at all... Seriously.

Nope, not talkin' about this site in particular, just curious what you people's views are on this?

I too have that problem, my forum was active and growing (about 200 members) people were posting lots, we had a great thing going and all of a sudden it just died. In my opinion we had a good staff, a good theme, a nice skin...it just died.

The answer is easy: lack of subject material. People join forums to make friends and talk about things. If nothing of interest is talked about, then the forum dies. Also, people have lives outside of the forums. Eventually, this generation is going to grow too old for Inheritance and this site will die down unless it's used to talk about CP's other books he's undoubtedly going to publish. But even then, people get older and they lose interest in these things.

Luckily for SF there was always a new wave of members when some of the old ones left . The traffic at SF has been reducing steadily since the release of the movie, lets just hope that it does not die down.

Anyway I still have the domain for an additional year, so either way, the board will always be available.

obviously, people leaving, growing up, school, lack of topics, etc. or when the series ends.

SF has slowed down, but only, or mostly, because of school. really, nothing else. members still frequently join, and we have a number of people still coming, strong, veteran members who've been around for a while and will stay, too. summer was rush hour for us, its just not a busy time now

Let me give you a glimpse of my board...

My board is based generally on books by theme, there are several genres Scifi/Fantasy, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Horror, Romance etc... and there is an application section where you can apply to have a forum or section dedicated to the discussion of your favorite series. We also have the same thing with RPG...It sounds great on paper but noone is seeming to make use of it.

By the way we do have a real world RPG :p

this isn't a slight, not at all, but if your members aren't loyal to the site, especially if their part of multiple forums, then they might leave.

Maybe i'll check BNM out, Nate

That would be great, I definately think it has to do with members aswell.

Yeah, i joined. hope it helps!! and also, with a forum that's too small, even just a few people leaving has a large impact. which may be BNM's problem

more for the book, i doubt the movie will draw a TON of people, but it probably will pick things up

even if its a bad person, like murtagh, which i doubt, people will still rant. but your right, of course

my forum is dead.. only 2 people post on it me and solembum so its a never ending msn chat but on a forum haahahah im not going to post a link because louis might get mad at me but its been cleaned up a lot so if you wanna see it send me a pm and the theme right now sucks (warcraft) ill change it soon though to something not game related

Which members do you think you would like to see come back? =]

it is simple if you run out of stuff to talk about or the object which you are discussing becomes obsolete

A website of this type depends on two things to sustain itself; a living community, and a structure to keep people who join. Activities, improvements, and the like. The former has never been a problem, the latter has been.

Obviously, everyone wanted to see me. I really want to see Annie. She's the one person I'd have expected to still pop in every once in a while at the very least. Other than that... Arya Svit-kona, Firetongue, Fathskie, fronzz, Pomfret, rpm12345, Scarecrow, Elvenwarrior (or did he get b&? I forget) ,Valkyrie (I had to look at my list for most of these)... a couple others. The reason I left was that I joined when I was in middle school. When I went into high school, I just didn't have the time between school, studying, and sports. Now that I'm in college, I actually have more time than I used to.
Another factor was that there was a very extended wait between the second and third books. SF is primarily a place to talk about the Inheritance series, so when people had more or less exhausted topics regarding it, activity started to dwindle. Honestly, the rest of the forums are auxiliary, just places for people who talk about the books to talk about other things and interact with people they enjoy talking to about Inheritance. The only thing that would be guaranteed to re-energize SF would be if CP were to put out a new series. Maybe some restructuring would help in keeping people here (i.e. making the other forums less auxiliary).