Exactly. It's not the end of the world. I may not like the nods all that much either, but I've learned that there are many reasons they are given, and it would be a waste of my time trying to dissect it all. I made up my mind long ago to just ignore them, and this is pretty darn easy for me to do, once I've put my mind to it. You can't please everyone all the time. I never saw this site as a competition, and the whole notion of a challenge...I mean, come on. How old are we?
I'm one of the moderators here too, and no, I have not noticed a substantive drop in usage here. It goes up and down all the time. In fact, I haven't been on since mid day yesterday and now I have a whole bunch of posts to read through, and it seems like a lot to me. Every time I go on a 5 day vacation, I come back to 6 or more pages of unread posts, and that hasn't changed either. I really don't have time to go through them all either. You know, people do move on. Perhaps they are too busy with Facebook and trying to find a job or pay their bills, or on any number of sites out there since social networking and interactivity blew up. The internet scene changes every day. People also use this site for different reasons. For me, it's primarily a site where one can ask questions about Astoria, and find out about the latest restaurant, bar, store, etc. I've met a lot of really nice people from this board, and it's helped me explore my community. I'm not here to debate with people and I really don't have the time, nor need the stress. If I don't like something, I ignore it, or I move on. This nod issue has been discussed to death, and the low potshots to the mods from some members are getting old. Not everything about this site is going to please everyone and it shouldn't have to. Like Kempster said, when all is said and done, it's not the end of the world.