Discendo Vox posted:

ll
You should not use the number of reports as a metric of quality; Campbell's law applies. There are reasons for the report number to decline that don't have to do with things getting better. Users leaving, activity shrinking, and users being taught that reports will do nothing, will also cause the number of reports to drop. You need to start with what you believe the forum is supposed to be, and directly tie it to your evaluation of "quality," preferably with more explicit terms, and with prior identification of carveouts.

For example, if you believe that the subforum should be educational, then people asking more factual questions that get answered can be a sign of healthy discourse, and that standard can be explicitly exclusive of people asking rhetorical questions intended to derail discussion. I could give a big rant about functional form here, but unless you think that "quality of the subforum" is inherently a number, you should treat numeric measures with skepticism- you'll tend to overvalue them.