his will qualify as "raining on the parade."
I belong to a number of diverse online forums and have seen similar threads, lamenting low traffic/few members/no contributions, and how to improve traffic.
The reality is that the world changes; social media has redefined how users interact with the Web. They're much easier to use on-the-fly and easier to post pictures to, something that's clunky on a traditional forum. Then there's the 800-lb gorilla in the room that no one wants to talk about
: that over time, some topics simply become less popular.
Additionally, "cheerleading threads", which have nothing to do with the core material, make a bad situation worse by diluting the reasons people came to the site in the first place. For example, how did you find koiphen? Did you find it by Googling "koi pond", or "what did you do today", "meatloaf recipes", "card exchange", or "answer a question with a question". While I understand the goal, it avoids facing root cause.
Then there's Google itself, which I feel has reduced some website owners to "ad whores." Many sites earn ad revenue, and some owners lose focus on their core topic and end up inventing threads designed to increase income rather than improving content. If my site traffic dropped off, I wouldn't ask why aren't people aren't posting or contributing. Instead, I'd reflect that perhaps my interests are no longer shared with the greater world, that I need to either be happy with less traffic, or move on to something more mainstream. The point is that trying to change human nature isn't going to happen.
The reality is that koi-keeping is very expensive (marginalizing a large percentage of people straight away), takes up valuable yard space (further marginalizing those with no or little yard space), requires maintenance (many don't have the time), and requires some level of mechanical aptitude, which also seems to be diminishing. The reality is that koi-keeping has always been a very small niche activity and no matter how it's coated, is likely to get smaller. The conclusion: be happy with the traffic that continues to come here, as nothing's going to magically increase it. It's neither good nor bad, it simply is