I pondered this a bit more over lunch, and did some random checks on the past Off Topic discussions. I've talked with several people over the course of the past year, and it's helped me examine the situation from a few viewpoints.

Overall, I think the situation in Off Topic is simply a result of a shrinking user base. I don't think the proportion of topics has changed drastically, though there is a noticeable reduction in political or religious topics. Off Topic has always had a pretty tech oriented slant, purely due to our shared interest in the music players at the foundation of this community. Browsing back, I see threads about ReplayTV and Tivo, BluRay and HD-DVD, various gaming threads, and a healthy mix of tech support posts. Beyond that, I also see posts about people's favorite beer, or some new science discovery. Posts about TV and movies of the day, favorite music, and so on.

Tech is a topic that changes rapidly, and there is a lot of fresh things to discuss. People's favorite beer? Thats not likely to change so much that it sparks a new discussion. So some topics get discussed, and aren't revisited as they have nothing new to talk about. The Off Topic section here is approaching 10 years old, and thats a lot of time to discuss a wide range of things. Now that I've looked back, I'm not sure creating sub forums would help, as it's nearly the same mixture of types of topics it has been. Post count may be another matter though. Looking at all posts over the history of the section, the top 30 topics have 12 that are pure tech like recent posts. A few more could be counted there like the Wii thread, and tech support one. Others range from the old avatar posting thread, to several political posts. And others are from major news events.

The other thought that I have here is that some of the normal social discussions have moved on to other mediums. I know a certain group of people here who hang out in IRC and socialize there instead of here. Some of those participants really don't post much here at all anymore. I'm not pointing this out to say it's a negative in any way, but instead to point to a trend that has likely spread beyond just that one group. Over the years social networks have become a standard on the internet, instead of being reserved for the tech types. It's possible the more social and less tech topics have also shifted more to those mediums. I discuss politics far more often on Facebook for example then I do here, but that change only occurred in the past year or two. I personally also share less of my social experiences here, because that's also occurring elsewhere.

With a shrinking user base, the users that remain have a bigger impact and claim a higher percentage of the contributions to a discussion. People's posting activities have shifted over time as well. As much as it seems Bruno posts these days, he's still only at 6.3k posts, a far cry from Bitt's 16.1k posts. Going through the list of the top 25 posters here, I'd say only 6 are posting at a level that I think matches their past posting activity. 5 are posting less frequently, 5 are still around but barley post, and 9 are pretty much gone.

I really don't know what to do to try and spur more activity, nor do I (now) believe I must do something. I'll continue to host and run this site for as long as I can. If it's still active and something comes up to cause me to stop being able to host it, I'll hand it off, as has been done once before. I will also remain open to suggestions, but in the end, the community here is what the community makes of it. People choose to leave, and other people choose to keep posting. And while I haven't run web stats in a while, I do notice a pretty consistent amount of lurkers too, who continue to choose to browse here and must be finding something they like to read.