I am going to mysteriously appear here after a long silence to post a huge wall of text!
I do check-in on the forum occasionally (today is one of those days) mostly to clean up a bit. I'd prefer to be a little more active but I have a lot of other stuff going on.
Here's my take on the forums dying thing:
I think people are leaning more and more toward platforms like Facebook because they're more conducive to "live" conversation, and connect with what's going on around them in one place. I get notifications in the same feed for my AutoX group, the Ninja 1000 group (which is constantly growing, and you're encouraged to join!), and all my other FB groups in one place. It's a one-stop shop for current events in all of my circles. Obviously, forums don't do that. I have to manually go to the AutoX forum, the V-Strom forum, this forum, the aviation forum, the MR-2 forum... It gets tiring bouncing around a lot, and I can see why most people don't have the energy/patience for that when a much more frequented, more connected platform exists.
Now, all of that being said, I think Facebook is terrible. It's primarily meant to be a newsfeed, with constantly refreshed content. Discussion doesn't happen for long, because older posts get aggressively pushed down and buried quickly. This causes oodles of people to ask the same questions over and over and over again, and it just turns into a check-in type space consisting mostly of "check out this cool place I visited" or "does anyone have <part> for sale" rather than real, fruitful discussion on any given topic. Because of the format I think it also encourages people to just yell their opinion as quickly and loudly as possible at each passing post so that people hear their say before its inevitable descent into the void.
Verticalscope does own most of the forums these days, it seems, including this one. I have had to work with them on a couple of occasions to figure out stuff with this forum. I don't love it, but it also helps keep the forum "free" without having one member or a small group of members burdened with the infrastructure. As someone who hosts my own stuff from home, this is not a small undertaking and while many will complain about ads/etc, this is the price we pay in order to get something out of nothing. This is literally why Facebook is used by the vast majority of people. It's free. Yeah, you have to put up with ads, but you're not paying for a membership and you're not dealing with the logistics of running a site.
On the topic of the people/audience/etc... I think this is where there might be some misconceptions.
As far as people getting political/pushing views on others, I think this is something that you'll encounter no matter where you go, it will just affect you more/less depending on how much that community's general vibe aligns with yours. The more general you get, the more of a mixed bag you get, and the more restrictive things typically get because they're trying to cater to a larger audience. In here, I've seen a lot of things (mostly casual sexism/racism/condescension) that I have chosen not to act upon because of the size of the crowd, my position on the forums (as an admin and as someone who isn't actually all that active) and because I'm not the thought police. I certainly don't appreciate being lumped in with all the other millenials (I'm 30, probably one of the youngest if not the youngest forums member), and have seen people say some shitty stuff about my generation. I could of course spout a bunch of BS about boomers but none of that is productive.
I think it's important to have an off-topic discussion area. I think if people get frustrated about things getting political, it's with those who drag it into everything (like
@Northern Ninja said), and can't let it go when others just want to agree to disagree. So, while I understand the frustration and have it often myself, I think it's important to let people have a little freedom, as long as it contributes something worthwhile to the discussion, IN the appropriate subforum.
The "Zero dicks or trolls on Reddit" thing had me in stitches. I'm on Reddit a pretty good amount, and my GF pretty much lives there. There are tons of assholes on Reddit. Thankfully yes, most get downvoted into oblivion but due to miscommunication, people taking things at face value, people will often go along with the crowd and downvote good content/posts because they saw it had a bunch of downvotes already. I've found myself guilty att times even of reaching for the downvote button before thinking about what someone actually said. Also, going back to an earlier point, you're far more likely to agree with people who think similarly to you, so, if you're liberal, you're far more likely to enjoy Reddit than if you're super conservative, because, let's face it, MOST of Reddit is quite liberal. I don't think there's anything wrong with that but I can definitely see why some of my conservative friends strongly dislike it. All of these different forms of social media (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, even forums) eventually segregate themselves into echo chambers over time. People naturally gravitate towards the social groups that are compatible with their worldview, so much like someone said earlier, when a forum/group starts to split, for example ,into track riders, street riders, and hard-parkers, they're going to naturally boil down to one of those groups that remains, while the other people with diverging views find someplace else. The only good thing about forums (and other types of groups like this) dying slowly is that it forces people out of their comfort zone into a new space where they have to interact with other people who are different from them. Sort of, refreshes things a little.
My only regret with forums dying is the reference side of things. I've said this before and I'll say it again. Forums are FAR better for actually working through issues/builds/advice/etc than other social media, just because the structure is much better for it and it's not a spazzy in-the-moment newsfeed that won't ever look the same twice. This permanence I think is what helps forums like this one retain their value, along with you vets who stick it out to help maintain them.