It's always a bummer when people use the excuse "Real life is keeping me from sending a one line reply" while they post away on twitter/facebook, but I haven't seen that explicitly being done here, so maybe there is just THAT MUCH work to do that it's taking a while. Word of any kind is nice, and if the workload is too much for the staff, there certainly are some over (and under!) qualified web developers that trawl these forums who would be more than happy to donate the help for free.

I think the trend for artists to migrate to facebook is sort of a bad one, especially for the 405th. I understand a lot of people spend a LOT of time there, but it's not really a community site, despite its nature. Facebook is really a place for people to visit other people's diaries and comment on them, and you can follow a few friends you know easily, but it isn't really a way for a large group to congregate and grow. Worklogs and questions/answers sort of get jumbled amongst the wall posts of what people had for lunch, and their political opinions, and really I don't think it's as good a place to find new people and really interact with them because everything ultimately gets mashed into two long columns.

Pretty sure I came to this site at the end of a departing of a lot of the original veterans, and there is the complaint of the revolving door of noobs, but really I think people posting build logs and then vanishing because they made it and don't need the community anymore is the real downer. Retaining veterans is important! I haven't finished anything yet, but I've been doing my best (while there are forums to post on) to help others, and slowly spur myself to make progress on my own stuff (of which I have some but can't really post about because of... well the topic) Hopefully we can have the site back up and start rebuilding the community! Time will tell.