[QUOTE 5052192, member: 45"]The decision that has been made will result in a forum like the CTC one. It will be quiet and occasional. If that's what you want then that's fine. A pub will die if people can't socialise without censorship of issues that don't need to be censored.[/QUOTE]
I've a slightly different view of the CTC forum. It's great for technical posts, but it is quiet and I feel that's largely because there's a few extremists (from various political viewpoints) who were allowed to drown several of its political threads in the Tea Shop with their bile. Even really objectionable stuff wishing harm on others merely because they had a certain "protected characteristic" (as it's known in law) was left there for a while with the mods closing reports saying... let me see... "often it is useful to let the words "brand" the author".
So most people now ignore most of the political content and most of it settles into extreme political stalemates.
The other probable reason for it going quiet is that CTC seem to have intervened to ban certain critics of their latest Chief Exec from the forum. I'm not sure how many and so on, but I feel it has chilled discussion of CTC's actions... which unsurprisingly was one of the few things which united most of the people who used the forum, so it's gotten quieter. There's now a brief grumble each time they only allow approved candidates to stand for election, muck the voting system around, not implement AGM decisions or put the AGM at something like 9am at one end of the country, but it soon quietens down each time now. Even CTC's decision to quit the European Cycling Federation didn't generate many posts.
Other than that, it seems to be becoming mainly a quiet touring and technical forum. Which is fine and useful but not exactly "a fun and friendly cycling community".
IMO the key lesson there is to avoid having a self-perpetuating group of moderators left to their own management except for occasional interventions to ban critics of the sponsors.