In the time I've been coming here (less recently as the pinball market makes me less interested in the hobby), the overall quality of discussion has taken a massive dive. I'd say a while ago, just going on the first page of topics I'd be genuinely interested in half to a third of them. These days it's far fewer, and many topics just get suffocated under the sheer weight of posts without any real value in them. It's a difficult balance with so many users, but when I log in and get faced with so much background noise, I can't be bothered to post anything even on subjects I'm interested in or where I might have something useful to add - doesn't seem worth it.

I'd get rid of the karma system - it's clear that the population is too large for it to exist now. Where it previously encouraged a few idiots to spam topics, there are more of them now. Check out the thread where a 'certain user' is having his own party for accumulating karma points. How did he do that? Shamelessly posting crap in every topic he could find - it deserves a ban rather than a celebration topic. It's disruptive and selfish. If you're not willing to moderate post quality, then you need to remove one of the incentives for contentless posts.