I'm just saying this in a generic way, not specific to any one forum- but I have seen it in many places in the past, and one particularly close to me (I was an Administrator on a car-related forum- when I left 12 years ago it had an membership of around 25,000 of which 500 were active regularly, another thousand sporadically active, and the rest people who had left already or were only transient- owner currently 'hides' the numbers, but a few years ago it was around 40k and a million messages posted)- but same concept when the owner doesn't involve themself- even if only for a relatively short period of time (even a few months)- the Administrators and Moderators have no 'leader' laying out the groundwork or proper guidelines, they take it upon themselves to define the policy/rules/mannerisms in dealing with people and not having someone to 'pull them back' on occasion can often lead to problems. Of course some forum owners (again, nothing specific) have no business actually running their forum due to a complete lack of expertise in the subject matter and/or dealing with people. If the only goal is to turn Google ads and generate revenue and do nothing else- I would generally assume non-owners would not contribute large amounts of their time and effort to it without reimbursement- but I have been proven wrong on this many times.

Forums can be a bit of a pain to run actively and can become much like a 'job' for alot of people- a job they may not particularly like but they stay around out of a sense of community service, ego boosting or simply not knowing what else to do with their time, or a combination of these things. If someone 'slips up' occasionally, that can probably be forgiven- it's only when it becomes an ongoing issue for people and members jump ship en masse that maybe things need to change. That being said, a few dozen people jumping ship, of which half or three quarters will likely go back to the original forum eventually, won't cut it as a viable 'alternative'. I have been hinting at this a bit here- but I am basically daring these new forum owners to keep it active and not let it go like the other 'alternatives' have gone up to now.