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In terms of suggestions, I think the following might be good.
1) remove the thanks/reputation features. Probably wont be the most popular idea but it might be a better way to have people engage in debate and liven things up as opposed to sitting back and "liking" a post. It might also improve the quality of the post and prevent people from fishing for thanks. The obvious thing that you would need to mitigate would be people just saying "agree" or "this" but that could be done through posting rules/minimums/filtering and/or moderation?
2) reduce the number of forums and (reassign/increase moderation). There is no reason why we have so many subforums. Put the essentials in there - LOI, Ireland, Juniors, Other Football, Sports General and Off Topic (people can post music, TV and politics there). Get rid of everything else. Nobody wants to visit a graveyard subforum, so much energy to get it fired up again and almost impossible once it dies down.
3) restrict the sign up rules. IIRC I lurked for probably 2 years before signing up as I didn't have a non-free email to use and eventually ended up using my brothers. Its probably still the one of record on here. Sure you will get some additional wums or people running duplicate accounts or Russian bots but if you reduce the forums but keep the same amount of moderators, it shouldn't be too difficult to weed that out early.
4) Loosen the moderation reigns on things that don't matter. Especially for those who are long term posters. It is stupid the amount of warnings and suspensions I got over the years. Allow a certain amount of ribbing and mild trolling but draw the line at disrespect (which I was definitely guilty of early on). Encourage debate and different opinions - I felt shut down and shut out of the politics forum and had a number of false accusations leveled at me for daring to share a different perspective/opinion and it still bothers me. I don't think that should happen. I think senior posters are the lifeblood of this place and once you start shutting them down, they will continue to leave. Moderate disrespect, promote debate.
These are just some ideas to consider. I agree with Paul and Stu that the place is dying and needs new blood or a revamp of sorts. It would be a shame for it to continue to die slowly without trying something.