Well, first of all, I would like to point out before my post, that I haven\'t been around here that long. I have, however, been to several different message boards and related communities before this one, and this exact same thing happens at every one of them. A few years down the line, you always get people longing for the good old days, when everything was better, and wondering just what went so very wrong. Basically, these are my thoughts:
why things changed: When the boards first formed, and a lot of the older members of the community discovered them, things were, no doubt, very different. I\'ll make a bunch of assumptions here, so correct me if I\'m wrong. When the boards first started, they were much more centered around the gaming aspect of the boards. That, afterall, would be what drew people to the boards in the first place. As time passed though, and people began to know eachother better and feel more comfortable here, the off topic section took over as the main part of the forums. More and more people started to come to it. With new people coming, new ideas and styles of posting were introduced. It seems that new members often post more than the older ones, wanting to raise their post count and become more familiar to the others, in order to shed the dreaded "newbie" tag. Because of this, at different times, these new people will be the most visible ones on the boards. That means that they will have the most influence on other new people who may just be arriving. Thus, the posting style will tend to evolve, usually towards more spam and brainless topics, over time. Standards will slowly decrease, and eventually the older members will look up, and realise that the forums they once loved to post in have changed greatly, and in a way that they don\'t like.
How to fix it: The most important thing is for the older members, who are disgusted by the new ways of members, to not back off. If you don\'t like the topics that are there, post topics that go in directions you like. Sure, if one member does this, it\'s not going to work well, but if a group of members, especially if it is some of the more well respected ones, make a collective effort to post interesting topics about relevant issues, then it really can make a difference. Hopefully, others will enjoy these topics, and follow suit. If some members, probably newer ones still looking to make a name for themselves, start to question your actions, just ignore them. Maybe even explain your actions to them. Perhaps it will even lead to them following along for the greater good of the forums.
The problem, as I see it, isn\'t so much that there are a bunch of tasteless topics, but that intelligent topics aren\'t as equally present on the boards. Maybe you don\'t even have to do much. Maybe post a topic a week, and if it is truely interesting, it might last a while, and get a bunch of interesting replies and some intelligent thoughts. Maybe get a few people to do this, and you can have, at least an attempt at a thread like this a day, when you combine the efforts of 7 or so different people.
If I am missing a major problem you are trying to address, please tell me. I would like to get a good idea of just what would need to change for the forums to be as good as your say they once were.
