I want to be clear that what I'm about to say isn't a critique on anyone, but a simple observation.
In the past, when the site still had moderators, my feelings were fairly mixed. I liked the idea of having another person to turn to when there were problems on the site; I also liked the idea that a more active moderating team had the potential to instigate growth within the community. Both of those things are ideal and desirable. Unfortunately, a lot of things happened, which led to a very chaotic situation that, unchecked, continued to devolve. I'm not going to go into that because none of it is very relevant.
If the site reinstates a moderating team, there definitely has to be changes to how the team worked. I think, one of the main reasons the site witnessed the things it did was because there lacked sufficient oversight. It didn't feel as if anyone was holding anyone else accountable. I mean, moderators were essentially writing the rule book as they went along. Granted, this isn't necessarily the fault of the moderators or the admins, but, rather, the result of inexperience. I still believe that people had acted on good intentions, but, as everyone knows, the way to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Right now, though, I think the discussion we need to have is how to grow the site. The thing is, I'm not asking the site to be 10,000 strong by the end of the year; I'm not even asking for a 1,000 members. The only thing I'd like to see by the end of this calendar year is that the site has enough members to run 5 to 8 public role-plays with more than the same 3 or 4 people in each of them. It's great when the community is intimate; it means closer friendships. But a smaller role-play community is also a smaller talent pool. Essentially, the whole situation leads to reduced variety of role-plays, characters, and general options.
I know this whole post is something of a downer, but I just want to be honest with my thoughts and, hopefully, we can all work out possible solutions for either getting people to post publicly again or getting fresh blood into the mix.