I don't think Gardenweb is dead, but it could be a lot more active with a few changes. Right now, there are a few steps people have to follow to get to the forum they want (and they may not know where to go to find what they're looking for). The longer it takes to find the right place to post, the more likely people may be to search for another site to post (although they may not find what they're looking for elsewhere, either). The list of forums isn't as organized as I would like. There's no watermelon forum (I'm not sure if there's a muskmelon/cantaloupe, or cucumbers, either). There's no sweet pepper forum. There's no option to look at all new posts in the Gardenweb forums, as far as I know (that would be pretty nice). It's difficult to stay within the Gardenweb forums sometimes (you may accidentally venture into housing forums or something). Posting in multiple forums (or tags) at a time isn't always an option. It would be nice if you could edit and especially delete really old posts of yours (even if it keeps a record of what you said when you said it). The cooking forum, or tag, is really hard to find. The competitive Q/A focus in some forums can turn people off who just want to chat (it's not always obvious that there is a Q/A focus, and it can cause contention; I think other sites have a better format for that; Houzz has a great format for discussion—not for Q/A, IMO; a Q/A site needs upvotes, reputation points, the ability to accept answers, more user moderators, privileges based on reputation and such, etc.; Gardenweb is a set of forums; giving it a Q/A focus can confuse and hurt people; I think it should stay a forum—there are enough good Q/A sites already on the Internet, but gardening forums are lacking). There's competition from Tomatoville, etc. It's very hard to find Gardenweb forums from the Android app, unless you're being directed there from a specific post or something. The actual forum software itself is great (both the website and the app), and has a lot of potential, though. It's very fast and easy to use (easy to post and read once you are in the area you want to be in). It's nice that you don't have to be logged in to see pictures. I like how you can like posts, and thank people who respond. Uploading images to posts is very easy and straightforward (once people catch on, I'm sure they'll do it more).

There are definite improvements over the old Gardenweb, but it's harder to find stuff.

Some of the Gardenweb forums are a lot more active than others. I do think that the site is gathering new users as people get used to it, however.

This is currently the main gardening forum I use, although it wasn't always that way.

You could get rid of forums altogether (except one), and treat tags like forums, but allow for tag inheritance (anything tagged with tomatoes would automatically be tagged by Solanum, Solanaceae, Nightshades, Vegetables, Gardening, Gardenweb, etc., although to remove all the implicitly added tags, you'd only have to remove tomatoes) Then show the tags listed by popularity count (and have a set of standardized tags pretending to be forums).

You could make some tags aliases for others (like Solanaceae and Nightshades would be the same; muskmelons and melons would be the same; tomatoes and tomato would be the same; hot peppers, chile peppers, chiles, chilis, chillis, etc. would be the same tag).

Tag inheritance and tag aliases can both be very important to the success of this model. Plain tags done as they are usually done probably isn't going to be a success in place of forums.

You may need to differentiate between standardized system tags and user-created ones, too (if you allow user-created tags).

If you want help on structuring what inherits what and what is an alias to what, I'm sure I and others would gladly provide help.

Anyway, this sounds a lot easier and more flexible than doing forum inheritance.

Another issue I see is that users of one Gardenweb forum may not interact much with other Gardenweb forums (another reason for inheritance; so you can go higher to find common ground). Most Gardenweb users aren't going to see this poll, I'm pretty sure. It was seemingly coincidence that I found this poll.

I personally find this forum not user-friendly and doesn't feel as active as it should.
I don't know if any of you ever visit City-Data.com and their forum but it has a much more user-friendly feel to me. I think Houzz needs to make some changes to keep this a lively place for discussion.

Remember seed saving. Remember farmers use to do it to save on expense for next years crop. They cut that out. This is the same thing. Instead of a seed it's knowledge. Your just being dumbed down further to just being a consumer.