All for valid criticism (and your comment may be tongue in cheek) but seriously - complaining about something that EVERY platform will have to some extent boggles the mind.

Heck - even X and Facebook have help articles explaining how to post.

Bit like "New improved recipe" = we have found some cheaper ingredients and production methods.

I don't disagree with you.
It most certainly used to be a lot busier years back.

Just making the point that over there, it utterly died when they changed things.
It has recovered a little since then, but many of the main posters just left.

or got banned for nothing 😞    I said a couple of  weeks ago that i could see Ebay doing away with these boards.

I think it will be run by bots 

My guess is that only Mentors will be able to respond.........

I am, of course, just guessing

Surely 99.5% of replies to questions have been robot scripted  for years. No offence to the team but working as intended springs to mind. Privately Kat has helped me.(keeping head down now}

Perhaps an independent discussion group might spring up, hosted outside of Ebay's reaches?

When the SD conversations  were ongoing and all the criticisms of eBay were allowed on here I questioned why they hosted a board which roasts them every day. The answer appearing to be: better to be in control of the boards than have an independent discussion board.

That said, it would be better all round if they used the boards as a sort of suggestion box which they can focus their teams on fixing issues raised and they certainly don't do that. New boards would be very low on the list as mentioned by others. 

'Bit like "New improved recipe" = we have found some cheaper ingredients and production methods.'

And made it smaller... 😒

I can't see how the navigation could be made any simpler... this is such an easy site to use - mouse over the menu & one click gets you there. Any extra clicking & scrolling will not be an improvement..!

See my comments about the river..... 😉

I didn't like to read "some existing activities will not be available"..  Knowing ebay that means the good bits will disappear and the "streamlined" remainder will be more difficult to find, harder to use and even more slanted towards what remains of the ebay fan-club.

When I first found the boards there was no Community Team, just one Community Manager / Referee.  For quite a time I honestly believed he was a 'composite' and whatever his name was, was actually whoever in the office was on the naughty step that day as a sort of punishment detail.  

I agree the last format change, along with hiding "Community" at the bottom of the page, damaged the inter-action so badly it has never recovered.

Well i think the Ebay Cafe and groups will probably no longer exist as a lot are dormant.

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@eastern-lights wrote:

Perhaps an independent discussion group might spring up, hosted outside of Ebay's reaches?

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I've heard there's one already  --  business sellers only though.

"along with hiding "Community" at the bottom of the page"

And thanks to that scourge of many web sites - infinite scrolling - "Community" is made even more difficult to find.  Even the inventor of infinite scrolling wishes he hadn't invented it.

"Well i think the Ebay Cafe and groups will probably no longer exist as a lot are dormant."

I've belonged to various forums in the past which have used the Proboards format.  That format gives the Cafe section equal in-your-face visibility with the "serious" sections.  The best one wasn't just entertaining, it was a mine of helpful information about any problem you wanted advice on, and you got to know who would give trustworthy advice.  However, it was noticeable that the forum with the 70/30 women/men split was much more convivial than the forum which was the other way found.  I'm not sure if that is typical, or what the split here is.  One of them banned discussion about politics or religion, and it needed much less moderation than the other forum.

Lycos chat is good.