not because of an actual playercount drop ( Because who cares about actually backing up your statements with data, right?).
Indeed, I've rallied against the 'VC:MP is dying' argument for years now - people were saying it was dying from the moment I joined the mod, and it was patently untrue.
But now, we actually do have data, and as Morphine pointed out, it doesn't look good. When you have 30 players in EAD, they're 95% players who have been on the mod for 3+ years already. The truth is, we're not getting enough new blood.
If by graveyard you mean inactive, I have to disagree.
For an official forum for a community as vocal as this one, the VC:MP forum is
incredibly inactive. To deny it is to be willfully blind. There are scripters dropping stuff there from time to time, and beta testers occasionally contributing to and locking threads, but other than that there's essentially nothing of any value, meaning or interest.
It's mostly people just asking for the same old script support, or posting topics that should be elsewhere.
Here's a fun exercise - open all the frontpage boards in separate tabs. Look at the 'last post' column. All but one of them have posts from April and before. Some of them have posts from years ago.
Here's another one - try and find 5 meaningful or heated discussions from the past year that weren't related to scripting.
Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that the VU forum has become the unofficial VC:MP forum. But I know that, for the good of the game, it shouldn't be this way.
Your suggestion about community leaders is already happening I believe, just in a different way. Whenever there's a VCMP event people usually post on VCMP forums about it.
It's not enough. People post and get what, 100 views? And no replies? That system has been tried for more than a decade now, and it hasn't garnered good enough results.
Empty titles and ranks to do something that they're already doing. I always like to avoid more ranks/positions since that further splits up the community, not to mention the drama that comes with it.
I will grant you that there would be a bit of tension with ranks, as with any perceived hierarchy. But that tension and any consequent drama would be eclipsed by the motivational effect that ranks and recognition would have. When you give someone a title, a responsibility, a formal legitimacy, they are much more likely to actually do shit.
Another thing is that what you call community mods/admins already exist, in the shape of beta testers.
I refer you to my product developers analogy. Beta testers are not hired for community management. Their role is to test the product, they should be experts on the mechanics of the game, that's it.
P.s. Newk, the only reason I didn't include you in my list of suggested peeps is cos I thought you were inactive lol. I would have put you in 'Community Admins'.