@Smirnoff: I hear you on the letterboxd. I'm still not sure what "like" means. I have my own meaning for that word (i.e., I "like" a "review," even if I don't agree with the rating, if it informs or entertains me). But I don't know what other people mean when they "like" something. Whenever the half dozen or so people who frequently "like" one review of a series I put up at one time, I am then left wondering why they didn't like the others. On the one hand, I seem to have a good number of people who like a review, but never follow me; and on the other, I have a number of followers who follow everybody (because, if only a fraction of those reciprocate, then they too will have thousands of friends!) I did recently switch to "Pro", which allows for filtering out certain activities by others, which is nice. From your comments though, perhaps I could be a lot better about posting a response - even if it's just to say I read something and I care. (I'm not being sarcastic.)
Yes, film is subjective, but that shouldn't stop the discourse. For example, I really did not connect with No Country for Old Men on an emotional level the first time I saw it; but then I had coffee with a good friend a week later, and from that conversation, my own perspective changed entirely. In that case, it was about the sharing of the personal experience of the film. It had nothing to do with whether and what aspects of the Coen brothers' mise en scene was consistent with this or that prior film or prior director - not any more than who won a Kurosawa v. Ozu smack down has much relevance other than to provide external validation (which we all need, I suppose, but is not really that enlightening). From my own perspective, the least interesting writing on film (many by those who fancy themselves to be great film writers) are by those who consider themselves so well-versed in the language of film (read: "look how many films I have watched and developed non-mainstream fetishes for") that they have sublimated their subjective experience of it into what they sell as objective. By contrast, I am a fan of those who write about film as argument within the context of their own genuine interests, biases, etc. - i.e., the reader comes to know the film while also coming to know the writer.
@Steve: For my own account, I do remain active in the Filmspots part of the thread (the one aspect of the forum where the weight of opinions is objectively measured), but I have definitely noticed that unlike in prior years, it is May and there is no FYC thread for 2014. This is not intended as a knock on the busy moderators, but more of an observation that not many participants seem to care.
I also post here occasionally - sometimes links to my blog, sometimes mini-reviews, and sometimes responses to the half-dozen or so people who care (whenever I remember). But those people tend to make up a minority of a critical mass of a two or three dozen who really account for most of the activity here. Most of that critical mass (and I am not talking about trolls) either (a) have nothing to say to anything I have to say and/or (b) have nothing to say to anything I have to say but short snide/contrarian/dismissive/didactic quips - none of which is conducive to the kind of discussion I prefer. I would post about a film, it would get ignored, and then a week or two later, someone else would make a shared observation I made about the same film, and it would be frickin' brilliant. Or I would post a question or comment in reply to a review and would be the only one not to get an answer. And then there are these consensus opinions of the cabal that seem to emerge that I just cannot fathom, much less agree with (e.g., it's definitely fashionable on the FS forum to hate all things Christopher Nolan). To put it simply, if the FS forum is a "community," then I'm simply not one of the cool kids.
For the last year and a half, my blog has been a far more gratifying outlet - even without any "promotion" (other than links on here or letterboxd), some pretty cool stuff has happened. In turn, I try to keep up on a half dozen or so blogs of people with whom I can have fruitful conversations with about film. I don't really have time for anything else anyway. That said, there's really no substitute for actual conversation about film (not podcasts), and I do miss my film meetup group from 6-9 years ago.