Tempting though it is to reply with a snarky answer, this sort of fits in with what I was getting at. As an example, these forums are garbage on desktop. They crash on my phone too in the longer threads. According to Steve Ronuken, there’s an app called Discourse purely for this type of forum. Aaaand in 2019 that’s the first I’ve heard of it. If it was mentioned, I missed it at the time but maybe it should have been pinned somewhere prominent on this forum. Anyhow, my point is that converting this forum to what appears to be primarily a mobile related app encourages one-line snipes, back and forth, replies, multi-replies and basically a shite experience for a desktop user. So the main forum degrades into a clone of reddit, with one-line gibberish and a load of bitchy back-and-forth between individuals whose readers really do not need to follow into that rabbit hole - and the discussion is diluted.
As with my earlier comment, in the other thread - you could blame users for this. ‘Ohhh they are all juvenile instant gratification monkeys from other games’ bleh bleh. Or you could look objectively and say ‘nobody asked for the old forum to be altered, and in doing so you catered to one specific group of users, which caused a ripple effect in the wider dialogue and engagement’.
Think about how that fits into the argument about whether players are at fault or developers over the state of the game, or forums.
Also, it wasn’t a personal insult directed at anyone on GD. Actually Olmeca is doing my tits in atm because I have to read this never-ending spew of justification, and frankly it’s not pleasant. And I don’t think it’s healthy watching someone throw themselves to the wolves like this, because - yet again, it’s not his damn job. He’s pumped out more words in the last month than all of CCP combined (including patch notes). At some point stepping in and yanking people back from public self-immolation is required.