Associate
I wonder if the forum useage overall has been dropping. I wouldn't be suprised if it has. Demographic is probably getting older too. So it may really be more about trying to keep the place buzzing than about the MM in particular. The MM is just good leverage.
Forums generally are dying. I have been on here for 20 odd years. I joined when I was a teenager building PCs, a hobby I have long since grown out of. I was a member on several forums back then. This is the only one which is still active. The rest are all pretty much dead. Everything seems to have moved over to Facebook groups, reddit and another more social media based platforms. I'm not a fan of these. Lack of anonymity, lack of moderation, structure seems to be less straightforward with algorithms controlling what you see etc.