> It's not its lack of features that people are leaving, it's that the rest of the Internet 'gained' features, specifically Facebook, Reddit, and Discord,

Sorry, no. I don't think you get it. People weren't leaving because reddit had threaded comments (or something dumb like that), and that was so great they just had to spend more time there. "Features" have nothing to do with the issues.

> and they consume more of every potential user's attention.

Metafilter's always been so small (and must remain so to work), that concerns like that are totally off base.

I honestly feel like part of it is just that the site sometimes feels like abandonware. That is, it's still running but older cruft is still there (like how you can add AOL Instant Messenger to your profile page) and there are many parts of the site that just don't seem vital and alive. Some of that has to do with a smaller userbase, but some of it also has to do with determining whose job it is to really stay on top of things like that, having the site under active development instead of just reactive "fix what breaks and do backups/updates" sort of things.

The last few years, maybe since 2016 really in some ways, have been really difficult on the site and people got used to more of a siege mentality in terms of managing megathreads, and very limited resources (human and otherwise) and that's a tough set of habits to turn around.

> People weren't leaving because reddit had threaded comments

Please tell me more about why engagement has dropped precipitously. Here I thought it was the superior UI of other sites but I can't wait for you to tell me why I really left.