This is funny I just got finished reading about the same exact thing on Reef Central about where the community is and what has happened
I believe it is a combination of several things with social media, local community forums and long time members being less active leading the charge to quieter forums
Social media- in the last 8 years this has grown by leaps and bounds and with the sheer volume of information available on the 'net even with a basic search can turn up a massive amount of information. The downside to this media is as we all know the Internet never lies so people just getting into the hobby get led astray by false information because they don't have reliable sources like canreef, reef central and other forum sites to fall back on because they either don't know about the forum or listen to bad advice on the net and easily become frustrated and overwhelmed with information overload.
Local community- this particular form of media has been a recent addition to the world of the reef hobby. While local community forums and groups have been around for a long time it has only recently taken off in part due to social media. It is easier to connect for many people to a local reefer than someone from another city because in part they can meet these people face to face and get the info they need from the local reef experts per se.
The long time reefers/contributors- this is the hardest one as the backbone of many forums are built on the dedication of those who first started in the hobby and everything was new. This forum has been around for 14 years now I believe and many of the people who were around when it started up have moved on, dropped out of the hobby or just lurk now because they have seen it all, hashed it out before and get annoyed by the same question asked 40 times a day (for example how many posts have there been about bristle worms). I have been in the hobby for three years now and I started on 7 forums now I am down to 3 Canreef, RC and Reef to Reef. Canreef is the only one I visit daily now and visit the other 2 mostly for Shiits and giggles.
The End result is how to keep people interested and how to keep the site current and engage new people to the hobby and more important how to engage the long time members to keep them interested in the site. This is something that every forum struggles with and luckily I believe Canreef has kept up with the curve because if it hadn't the forum would of shut down long ago.
The trick is to evolve and embrace all three of the above mentioned in new avenues keep pace with social media.
that's my ramble for today
