I can see a couple of explanations to the problems with activating the Forum.
Of course, I left this Forum a couple of years ago, due to some irritating circumstances, and I've only just returned, when an e-mail about the Forum update made me realize that my account hadn't been deleted, as I thought. So I'm not sure if my observation is correct, but my initial impression is that this Forum seems to be pretty dead nowadays. Possible a number of other active posters left at the same time that I did and drained it of content, but that's just a guess on my side. In any case, the Forum could now experience the same problem that a new Mud has in getting starting up. If there aren't any interesting threads, people soon stop checking. My guess would be that Ide has a point - people come here mainly to vote, not to discuss, so the vast majority of the hits you get are just people clicking the vote button for their Muds, possibly even using a script to close the window immediately after.
So the first thing needed is to get some interesting discussions running, to make people actually start checking the boards and coming back.
Another problem along the same lines is that there are way too many Text Mud based Forums around nowadays, and that there are only so many that you can follow, so people tend to choose the most active ones. And further, as Ide also pointed out, the different Websites specialize in different topics, and you tend to patronize the ones that have the most topics that interests you.
It's true that most of the active posters on most boards are Mud developers, and it is also true that the more experienced, 'professional' and specialized you become as a developer, the more you are picking out the type of content that really interests you. For instance, I am a Builder, 'Designer' and Scriptor myself, so I generally skip the coding boards, because coderish is Chinese to me. But even building questions have to be pretty advanced to really interest me nowadays, and I guess that it is the same for most long-term developers. Also the different codebases have developed so far in different directions that they are no longer generally applicable. So my own favourite hang-out when it comes to advanced building and scripting nowadays has become the CWG project, in particular the Builder Lounge there, where you can get some really interesting discussions and concrete suggestions about advanced scripting. But my guess would be that those examples are only interesting for Circle developers that use the DG_scripts code, because the mob_prog syntax is totally different.
Less specialized Forums, like this one, are best for discussing 'general' issues, like for instance ethical questions. But I totally agree with Spoke's observation that the most interest is generated whenever there is a flame-festival running. Sadly but true, flame threads may be negative from many aspects, but a fact is that even the most immature ones are usually quite entertaining.
However, if you want any serious discussions to develop, you need an environment where the posters actually respect one another. And this atmosphere must be based on REAL respect. Just censoring any inflammatory posts never works, it just festers more resentment, especially if certain parties are allowed more freedom to censor others. Respect has to be earned, it cannot be forced down people's throats.
But you want to attract PLAYERS here rather than developers, and I can understand that, because players are a much larger potential target group.
So far the best suggestion I've seen for attracting more players to the website has been Lasher's idea to provide serious reviews - not the kind of useless fanboy-praise/flamethrowing that generally passes as reviews. If you could achieve THAT, you would really have the potential of attracting a pretty large audience, since most players - AND developers - would appreciate reading serious reviews.
The main problem with THAT is of course to get hold of some serious reviewers, with the time and inclination to actually keep at the task and not fade out after a month.
Another problem is that it means a change of the present policy, where some games are allowed to refuse reviews. If 'qualified' reviews will ever work, they need to be global, and no Admin should be allowed to block out a review because it contains some criticism. No game is ever perfect, so to me the hallmark of a 'good' review is that it highlights both the good and the bad points of a game.
I can see this becoming a controversial issue, but then again that might be a good thing, since controversial generates interest.
