"Volume of traffic (and people)?" I bemoan the decline of both, in quantity and quality. I remember the good old days, 10 years ago, when you had to time your postings carefully to get good exposure, because they would get pushed off the front page in only 2 or 3 hours. Back then it was bothersome to wade through a couple hundred topic lines each day to find ones of interest. And then, the ones of interest could keep you occupied for hours. Now I can scan all new traffic on the 6 forums I monitor in about 5 minutes a day. I'm baffled by those who complain about "off topic" threads in forums that now have such low traffic.
"Far too much choice?" I imagine many photogs have other "hobbies". How does the amount of choice in those compare to photography? What's your experience? There are only 2 other hobbies in my house. My wife's hobby is marine aquariums, and I'm a former smoker who became a vaping geek.
The number of people, the number of forums, the forum traffic, and the plethora of hardware surrounding the marine aquarium hobby is some X factor greater than that of photography. I'd guess 3x to 4x. Curious note - I browsed one of her primary forums recently looking for something specific but I could not find it. I could not find any threads about Trump or Climate Change.
The vaping industry is only about 10 years old, yet it has eclipsed photography by another X factor. Number of forums, traffic, people, all greater. And choice? It's the wild west. For hardware, at least a dozen major companies and 3 times that in smaller startups. About 99% of hardware makers are out of China, and they are introducing new products at a rate that is staggering. Because it's China, there is no respect for copyrights or trademarks. Hardware companies use common product names, and fakes/clones abound. So, if someone says, "Have you tried the new eGo-C Twist", you gotta ask, "Which one".
Other companies make the e-juice that goes into the vaping hardware. Most of these are country bound (USA, Euro). There are hundreds of them in the US, maybe thousands, and most are very small outfits (1 to 5) people. They produce thousands of flavors. And now, DIY is taking off big time. You can buy your own raw ingredients and make your own juice. There is one recipie trading site that has over 88 thousand recipies on file. Most of those have multiple "reviews" by others who have tried them.
Too much choice in photography? It's relative, I think. Not too much for me.