warning: wall of text incoming, this is mostly directed at Mercurius but is a response in general too
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this is sort of a topic I don't want to address because no offense, I'm aware FES isn't super active and hasn't been for a while and might not ever be for a while, but I don't think that constantly addressing it is a good idea. it sort of spreads a sense of negativity and feeling of glum and such. we're essentially putting down FES, the forum we're currently on. how do you think this looks to new members or even older ones? it looks bad. it's depressing. we're definitely way more active than we were before the move and things will still have their ups and downs but let's focus on the positives and keep trying to move up.
There's a lot of reasons why SF is bigger and more active and it also has some shortcomings because of that. Not that I don't want more people here, but eh. I think if we continue to do our part and welcome the new members that come, we'll be alright. Just keep trying and have patience and faith and enjoy your time here. We don't have a lot of reasons for new people to join, that much is true, and I'd like to work on that when I have more free time. The thing is, SF does attract people because of the mainsite but you have Vincent who is very committed to that and doesn't spend a lot of time posting on the forums IMO (not compared to me when I go on a posting spree, anyway). I also have a lot of other responsibilities so I can't do what Vincent does and even if I could, I don't have the energy or skill to match up with him, not to mention he's already filled in that gap. Modding has died down and so has spriting so we need to find some sort of gap that we fill. Unfortunately I'm pretty much a one-man team--Shu hasn't even been able to get the graphics work to me--so it's difficult. I don't have someone like Jyosua dedicated to managing the site and the servers, I don't have dedicated income from ads, and like Snow said, activity draws more activity, which is a huge benefit in itself. The mods also don't carry the weight of not only replying to threads but welcoming new members and making new ones, which is something that in a smaller community like this, is very important: without people constantly posting, those people who only lurk and make a few posts here and there won't feel like posting themselves.
Anyway, it's complicated, and I don't want to censor your concerns by hiding it, but at the same time, it's not really something I want to dwell on right now. Just keep pushing forward. Summer is coming, so are 2 new Fire Emblem games for 3DS and a spin-off/crossover one for Wii U. I'll have more free time and ideally, so will a lot of the members. There's hope and we should stay hopeful and positive and maybe instead of lamenting how the forums aren't as active as others or as they could be, celebrating the fact that we've managed to get both new and old members to come back and post a bit and things are looking way better than they were (even if a lot of members are a lot more inconsistent in their activity--for instance me, Seraph, bb, and Shu don't really visit and post daily or close to it like we used to; if all of our members came and posted every day we'd be in great shape, but not everyone has that free time etc. anymore, so it's understandable...)