I'm not sure the book study has had much impact on the number of unrelated posts. The forum practically ground to a halt in April nearly a month before the study started. May was pretty good in terms of number of posts despite the fact that's when the study began. But June was the worst month I can remember for this forum in terms of the number of non-book study, non-devotional posts. Here's to hoping July is better.

Part of the problem might be that it is summer time now in most places. Thus people are taking vacations, visiting family, spending more time outside, and our college age members are back home with their parents.

Another part of the problem might be a routing glitch we are still experiencing (and our God-awful hosts refuse to fix) which keeps many people in some of the largest ISPs from reaching out site.

Another part of the problem might be the result of competition from CJAT. Whereas in the past, this place was the only Christian BL forum, cjat has fragmented the Christian BL community so that now there is no longer one large, vibrant, diverse community of BL believers but rather two small stagnant communities of like-minded Christian BLs.

The bottom line is that, for whatever reason, the regular members have stopped posting and new members haven't been appearing.

I have no problem experimenting with the format of the book study to see if that helps spur people into posting about other things. I can slow it down to once a week, move it entirely to the Devotionals section of the forum, or even just end it prematurely. But I'm afraid if I don't keep posting the book study posts, the alternative might be that nothing at all ever gets posted.