Dave, you can try and analyze the ins and outs of who posts and why from now to doomsday. The effort will be meaningless. After over 25 years of managing forums -- here, on CompuServe/AOL and MSN -- I assure you the comparisons you want to make are so roller-coaster in nature that any snapshot in time is meaningless. The yardstick is total page views, and they have continued to rise steadily since the forum began in 2004.

There will always be some who get mad and stop posting leave, or they simply are no longer interested; a fact of life.  90% of those continue to read, however. Half end up posting again.

I also assure you the participants on this forum and the quality of the posts overall are far above the norm for message boards nationally, far, far above the norm. This reflects the overall quality of people in Ocean Pines, and is a credit to this community. Those 25 years experience also convince me that those who complain about posts generally complain only when the posts tend to disagree with their own views.

At one time rock star Ted Nugent was a regular participant on a Hunting Forum I operated. Everyone liked talking to Ted, who posted more messages that anyone else. For the most part it was a love fest until some folks began disagreeing with Ted over some claims he made about his bow hunting prowess. His fanatical supporters began complaining about too many messages "attacking" Ted. For the most part they were not attacks, just people with an opinion the opposite of Ted's.

To his credit, Nugent told his supporters that those who did not agree with him had every right to challenge his views as much as they liked.

BTW, in the last two days there have been 25 new members joining the forum. On average, on all forums everywhere only about 5 to 10% ever post a single message and a relatively small core group  produces the majority of messages. This forum is no different. Lurkers (read only) dominate.

Anyway, you are certainly welcome to speculate to your heart's content.

Why not consider offering some of your own views on the issues discussed here rather than making an occasional cameo appearance to simply take pot shots at the forum.