Just asking the question. It seems to me that the IIS community maybe in Decline. How do I come to this view? Well in the absence of month to month stats that can be researched, it comes down to:
1. Past major contributors seem to be staying away.
2. The quality of the threads and posts are dominated by the usual beginners questions and things that could only be described as social, conversational, and chat. Sure it increases your post count but does it count?
3. Declining face to face interaction, whether this is Star Parties, morning teas, local dark site get togethers, etc.
4. Classifieds not moving gear that in the past would have been grabbed quickly.
5. The recent appeal for Mike to revamp, update, or get more involved again.
And so on.
Now this maybe a global thing afflicting amateur astronomy in general, as something similar is happening at Cloudy Nights but off a much larger user base.
How do you see it?
