Well, I can't comment on why the thread was locked as it wasn't me who locked it and you all know I do welcome newbies to the forum with open arms!
In fairness though the guy did say this;
no real point to this thread
and;
Apologies for the useless thread, but I promise to contribute something shortly!
As for the forum being quiet it traditionally goes quiet during the summer flying season, people being away and out flying etc so it was no real surprise to me to see the post counts down although I was surprised at how much they were down.
I can only put this down to the recent unannounced downtime from the servers resulting in many people unable to log-in for long periods of time. Also the dreaded 'Database' error has raised it's head a few times far too much for my liking recently too. People get fed up, myself included and the other mods and admins here too.
I don't like seeing the site down, it drives people away and that has been seriously annoying me as we (all of us) have built this forum up over the years only to see people keeping away because of the unannounced site 'downtime'. I have been assured though that the reasons for the site being down have been dealt with (human error) and things should improve and I can say though they have been improving too over the last couple of weeks.
Fly safe guys and have a fantastic flying season wherever you are.