I guess it’s related to general decline in player activity.
My guess: it’s boring.
I did my part of “legal” ganking and suicide ganking in past. And i was target of some suicide ganks.
What can i say? Unlike other forms of ship-to-ship pvp suicide ganking is boring. It’s too static and predictable (if you do it right and not blindly bait anything that moves).
I might compare it to running escalations in 0.0 space: doing it right and watching surroundings you have almost 100% chance of success and some variance in reward (thanks loot fairy). But there is small chance that anything will go wrong: you get disconnected or suddenly neutral gang from nowhere or something other…
It was Ima or Galaxy Pig? I don’t remember. But he wrote something like: “i log in, casually gank 2-3 miners and log off”. It does not look like fun activity which can keep you logged for hours isn’t it?
To each their own but i think it’s possible reason.
And one anatomist/forensic scientist (retired)
If people tanked their ships, didnt fly bling, and took other precautions, ganking in HS could largely be eliminated overnight.
It would still occur, but require far more cost in either isk or player participation, and provide far less opportunities in which to leverage them.
It’s often the activities around the actual ganking which keep us occupied. Hanging out with mates on comms, infiltrating target corps/alliances, setting up wardecs. There are a lot of things to do in EVE. If you only suicide gank (not bump), I guess it would be pretty boring; but I don’t know anyone (I’m in CODE.Alliance, and out of it) who fits that description.
A likelihood is not absolute.
Its merely a conjecture/deduction based on available data.
Inductive conjecture is even less valid.
As a forensic scientist, you can be certain a head was severed, as the evidence of that is absolute. But whether the victim died of another cause before the head was severed, is far less certain. You also cant tell with absolute certainty whom severed the head from the forensic data off the body alone, nor why the head was severed.
Originally it was “suicide ganking is in decline”. Nothing about other activities.
So i can guess that even if suicide ganking is only one of activities of some people then being boring it takes less and less attention with time.
Again: this is only possible reason. I cannot speak for real actors here.
Also to Jonah:
It could also be a sign people are taking more precautions, or that those that dont/wont have already left the game, or changed activities ingame.
Also to Jonah:
It could also be that gankers found more profitable things to do, or their actual org basis for their mains required their attention, or they found the gank community not to their liking anymore.
I think the argument was about people’s understanding of opinion and fact, and how these relate to ‘science’.
I’m actually not going to cross swords with you too much about it, for I don’t believe it would be useful.
To you and many others (including me), a severed head might be just that. But as scientists we need to be much more careful about such descriptions, and to avoid (usually in a courtroom) stating as fact something which could be pulled apart by (usually) defence counsel. It is more common to say, for example, ‘the head had been removed’, ‘the head was separated from the body’. ‘Severed’ might imply that a cutting implement was involved, where none could be proven to have been used.
I’d like to leave it there, having, I hope, addressed your concerns. If I haven’t, or you wish to continue to discuss these matters, please feel free to mail me in-game.
You made your case just fine and I also dont want to start arguing the specifics against a professional, as I am bound to lose.
But I think you will agree with me, as I illustrated, that deductions of likelihood are only as valid as the data they are drawn from. As such, they invariably are conjecture, in one aspect or another. As above, though you may be able to conclude 100% that the head was removed from the body, the exact time at which it was done, with what, by whom and why, are all beyond the data available to you, and as such, conjecture.
As to how this relates back into this thread, we can only guess at the reasons why things are happening as they are, within a margin of error, based on data we have.
There are many possible, valid hypothesis.
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Ganking miners scales pretty well. As described I can just login dunk some miner and log out again. But that means everything has to be in place, ships and mods on stock, etc.
There is however a lot more that that for longer playing sessions:
- Suspect bait with the looter
- Bump some Orcas
- Educate people about the Code in local (always great fun)
- Move or order materials in the prod facility or generally make sure it keep printing Cats and all the stuff you need,
- Selling loot on the market and ordering the meta mods I can’t produce.
- PLEX and Injector trading to keep everything subbed.
- The occasional war.
- Scout and prepare/plan your next deployment (I usually move around every 2-3 months, depending on how much I play).
- Gank some POS modules in offlined POS (sadly a thing of the past, yielded great loot)
And there is a lot of other stuff you could do but I don’t have the time for it:
- Infiltrate the local carebear corps with alphas
- Wardec and kill the local industrial stations
- …
There is so much to do and so little time… 
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Which have been my point all along but some people are not able to agree with that and consider that using irony or personnal aggressions make them point more valid.
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Welcome to forum PvP.
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Yes, that is all well and fine.
Glad you are busy and have plenty to do.
But what about the rest of HS populations capacity to intervene in/pre-empt a gank, except on the part of the target?
The rest are largely relegated to watching it happen.
Inb4 “thats your problem”.
There is a lot people can do about it. If I was an ag I would probably be pretty successful at preventing ganks because I know about all the mechanics and there are multiple stages during a gank where you are pretty vulnerable.
The thing that makes ag not fun for me is to make my gameplay dependant on a single other player and wait around for hours until he does something. That would be seriously boring. But if others think that is what they want to do with their time good for them, I don’t care.
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My point exactly (amidst others), albeit I wasnt being specific of AG, but of all other players in HS present during a gank or whom identify known gankers beforehand.
As I said, the way forward should perhaps be addressing the opportunity for the rest of HS locals to intervene in ganks, rather than worrying about the target, gankers or NPC CONCORD.
At best, and in everyones interest, any change that enables more 3rd party participation, should also enable gankers. I know that is a difficult proposition to design, but the ideal would be more HS aggression, both on the part of gankers and also the rest of HS.
Do you see what I mean? I dont want to nerf gankers, nor buff AG.
I want more HS PvP. Surely we can both agree that would be a good thing,
Again, it seems easier to die, and then cry on the forums than to actually put some effort in their chances of survival 
Well sometimes I am asking myself if they are genuinely posting absurd statements because they miss some scientific education or because they realize their don’t stand a point and prefer to troll than admit they were wrong all along.
Then I realize that even though most of their post suggest a trend, correlation is not causation. So I better assume that they genuine, even if it costs me time to repeat the same thing they seem unable to understand.
At least I now know there are 4 people who are unable to support a discussion nor admit they are wrong and I should just ignore them. Always look on the bright side of life.
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Thats the futile argument of the victim.
Im not talking about that.
I would completely endorse a suggestion that enables more ganks, as long as it is commiserate with more opportunity for the rest of HS to aggressively intervene in it.
I dont have that silver bullet, but I am looking for it.
To be relevent Antiga needs to simply do one thing.
Educate others.
When CODE appeared I read all their stuff, tanked my alts accordingly and behaved in a way that primarily increased my survival rate and happened to be inline with advised methods as written on Minerbumping.
Why does it take the gankers to explain how not to die?
Antiga would achieve their goals a lot more efficently by educating new miners in how not to die than going on some foolish quest for revenge.