Speaking from my perspective, looking at what's happening in terms of interest in the site I am quite confident that the forums and uploads do
not in any way represent the actual interest in the product.
Subscriber numbers are on the up, the volume of CD orders at the moment is staggering.
Put it in to perspective that the forums have about 4,000 people registered and the site has about 60,000 people registered, so it's only a small percentage - assuming all 4,000 people are still active and I seriously doubt that.
Speaking open, freely and frankly, and probably in a manner where i'll get a moderation request on my own post
- the drop in interest of the forums is frankly many of your own collective faults. I have constantly been frustrated and disappointed at the inability of many people to tolerate each other and / or work within the soft limits of the community. The last year or two especially has seen the forums pulled this way and that to where now the same people that demanded things be rectified by banning this, stopping that, encouraging the other now complain there are also too many rules.
I never wanted the cessation of commercial discussion on the forums, I had always wanted the forums to promote discussion of all areas remotely (or even closely, occasionally at least
)related to the hobby and yet the mob mentality on the forums makes that totally impossible. I can't even begin to count how many "well, if matt doesn't sort this out that'll be the end of it" type posts or emails I've seen or received. As a result, I've tried to mediate between people and bring some semblence of order and the result is that we can now comfortably discuss very little without feeling we're going to get jumped on, stepped on or moderated. Hardly a relaxing place to be.
I rarely use the forums myself other than to quickly scoot through them periodically, help out some beginners, sort out any conspiracy theories in site-admin and then back to the real world of just running the main site.
Some of the backbiting in and between various groups, the grumbling and mumbling going on in the background, emails to me describing how "a bunch of us are really disappointed in this or that on the site" referring usually to attitudes of other users etc is just completely disheartening.
I started this site because I have a love for trains, even if I don't have a great deal of knowledge about them. I started it because I also feel I am in a good position to put the time, effort and skill in to setting it all up and running it. I started it because I felt it would continue the effect of Tim's site and grow the organised community, provide a central point of reference for everyone to find out rather than lots of disparate locations - that part of things has worked superbly, the number and volume of new users joining the site is fantastic and every time we go to a model railway exhibition most of the people that are there, even if they've seen us before, are still exclaiming about how impressive it all looks.
Don't let the state of the forums make you think for one moment that things are quieting down in Train Simulator. The fact of the matter is that the forums do not represent this, and will not represent this until the people who use the forums can learn to relax, chill out and learn to get along with each other without resorting to games. I can't stand adult politics or playground politics and we've had both in abundance.
Again I re-iterate I am not tarring everyone on the forums with the same brush, for the most part there are just a small number of loud people.
Kevin makes a good point that many of the 'oldies' have moved to payware, which was not surprising and indeed we should be grateful it took as long as it did to happen. Some of them do still contribute work, though part of the problem is that many of them were prolific posters on the forums and have now been chased away.
Ah well, maybe i'm just depressed after reading those 5 pages.
Matt.
but that is the kind of attitude which will put new-comers off and inevitably this forum will die off through lack of interest.
was proving rather tiresome to say the least. (I do have a family and work life to consider outside MSTS) 
