Hi, swing848. I completely agree with you--and the state of ET's forums is not a secret to me or anyone else at Ziff-Davis. As with many other things, it's something we're working on. I wish I had more to tell you than that, but I just don't. I have to take responsibility for not being as forthcoming and open as I should have been about ET on the forums, but I'm going to try to get better about that now.
You're absolutely right about the issues with the forum and its audience, and I will definitely look into ways to expand and clean it up. My understanding is that part of the problem stems from the implementation of the new comment system on the site, which lets people talk about articles without coming into the forums. That was a decision that was made way above me, and before I started working on ET, so I doubt it's going to change.
There is one thing I want to clarify, though. You said: "...in the past year this site has lost nearly 100% of its audience." That is completely untrue. The site has not lost nearly 100% of its audience. In fact, it hasn't lost anywhere near 100% of its audience. If ET as a whole had lost nearly 100% of its traffic in the last year, I'm pretty sure that neither you nor I would be having this discussion now. Attendance and participation in the forums is way down from what it used to be, yes--that's not a secret. But you shouldn't construe that as the complete loss of traffic to the overall ET site, because that is simply not the case.
Regardless, I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to me about this stuff. Like I said, I'm going to try to be more active and involved from here on, so I don't think that you and everyone else will have to wait as long for answers in the future as you have in the recent past. If you have any additional suggestions, comments, or criticisms, please either post them here, private message me, or e-mail me at matthew_murray AT pcmag.com.
Thanks again,
--Matthew