An interesting compare and contrast:
When I first joined up, 2018, there was always activity here at AH. It was hard to keep up with if you were really interested in learning. You could post a question and easily nab 20+ replies within a day and sometimes have pages of ongoing conversation about an audio topic.
You know where I see that now?
ASR.
When I wake up in the morning and open ASR, I have 5 pages of "what's new" content to sort through.
To be certain, it is not all of interest to me... In fact compared to AH pre Pandemic, there was more here of interest to me in 1 or 2 pages of "what's new" content.
Half, or more of the ASR crowd seem to be from everywhere else than N.America. This is partly what drives so much overnight content. And today, during the day, I can walk away for an hour and come back to ZERO posts here and 2-3 pages again, over there.
You know what they don't allow? Politics. Somebody posted about "Chi-Fi" and got warned off hard. The thread is still active and the mods have seemingly stepped in a few time to remind folk to keep it cool. That's the closest thing to politics I've seen, there.
On the other hand, it isn't always the most comfortable place to try posting. I said to one guy that I was chatting with that there are smart people in both places, but many of the folk over there seem a helluva lot smarter than me.
Where I can hold my own here, there I feel like a 2nd grader going to the JuCo sometimes.
Another one is that there is a lot more active participation there from Industry folk and actual engineers.
What happened to the ones that used to hang out here?
I'm not here trying to harp on the topic. Please do not misunderstand my sentiment. The main point is that the Forum can still have a robust life.
As I mentioned above, the YT presence should still be introduced here. Want to drive traffic there, or back across to the Site?... You have to keep them both tuned up. Want to drive Patreon interest... same thing. Give me a reason why I should put money into Patreon other than a subscription definition on the Patreon page and the feeling it would be a lousy gamble...
Considering that the GoFundMe a few years back was so successful, right now I can't say
what I saw as a result of that donation.
I am not making any allegations or insinuating wrongdoing!
But it was said that AH needed help driving content... and here we are with
no content.
And with that, I think its time to bow out of this one. I've said my piece and shared my opinion.