There are many reasons. Our staff team is not what it once was (not that we are bad, we just have been better). Runescape is losing members and so are we. The community feel is slowly going away. The IRC is not nearly as full as it once was and no one talks in it anymore (Staff need to get in there and be active so people come). The UE is gone which was a great activity booster during its time and it gave people something to strive for. The quality of posts is declining as we lose older members that are replaced by younger, more annoying, stupid ones. This has a feedback effect and as the post quality decreases, the members that we want posting stop posting and the quality goes down the drain again. Over the last three or four years the market has been the major driving force behind Sythe while the rest of Sythe has suffered. With the decline in the market recently and the slow decline of the rest of the forums there is less incentive to stay once someone gives up on the market and with less people coming into the market, even less people even consider staying for the community.
To get Sythe going again we not only have to branch out in terms of markets but we need to improve the community. The IRC needs to be packed with people and active. We need to have intelligent threads that people will want to post on. We need to give people something to do with other Sythians. Richard should invest further in a Minecraft server that everyone could be apart of. It was working really well until the server started sucking. I could go on and on but I'm too lazy.