Websites like Warseer and dakka dakka are not having this problem. They go from strength to strength.
You have your facts incorrect about WarSeer. They have suffered a noticeable drop in activity over the last couple of years. Dakka has a lot of activity compared to all other 40K forums, but quantity does not equal quality.
For years this forum has suffered from cliques. When I look around now, I see the overwhelming majority of posts coming from the very same names that were moderating this forum when I first joined with my first account back in 2004 (I'm on my third account btw, I know it's not allowed but deal with it).
Again, this is not factually correct. The vast majority of staff members who were active in 2004 are now Ancients and have not visited the site for a very long time, or make only occasional appearances.
As for your multiple accounts, we are already aware, but thanks for the reminder.
Truth of it is, right now, this forum only appeals to a small niche, members of the cliques and people who actually enjoy excessive moderation.
An opinion does not represent a universal truth. One person's excessive moderation is another person's idea of good quality moderation. In the vast majority of cases, the only people who have ever complained about the moderation here are those who consistently break the rules and are moderated for it.
When I make a post to show people my latest battle report or whatever I post it on a number of forums, I literally make an identical post on... Warseer.com, Dakka Dakka, The Waaagh.com and a couple of others. This is the only forum where I have had moderators delete posts ad send me warning messages etc. That type of thing has always made this forum, above all others, be quite an unpleasant place to post. So I stopped. Haven't posted here in years
The majority of topics which you had deleted here were advertisements and looking at the list of topics which you started on WarSeer and Dakka, there are no advertisements among them. This means that either you did not post them there, or they were also deleted by the staff of those forums. In addition, you have not logged into WarSeer since 2012, and there's no apparent activity from you on Dakka since 2012 either. It's not just here where you haven't been posting regularly it would seem.
Your lack of traffic right now is a result of your chickens coming home to roost. You need to change or die.
The lack of traffic here is caused by younger people using Facebook, Twitter, blogs, or even You Tube, instead of forums, and by the fact that a lot of the core members of this site either no longer play 40K or have become to busy with real life to dedicate any time to this forum. As a result, there have been far fewer new members coming in to replace senior members who have departed, and thus traffic falls. In spite of all of that, the number of posts on the forum has increased by a significant amount this year compared to last year.
SMF, the group who makes the forum software for this and a vast number of other forums, has noted a marked drop off in requests for support with the software. This is a result of forums being used by fewer people. There is, therefore, strong evidence to support what I'm saying.
It genuinely makes me sad to see what has happened to this place.
In that case, I'm sure that you'll happily step up to the plate and help by making constructive contributions to the forum, so that it can continue to increase its activity next year
.