>>280910562Honestly, it's a shame how dire English imageboards are for users.
Most English speakers like the idea of being on a niche site, but nobody wants to actually move a way from the "relevant" spots. Figadmin, like acid/Mark or the webring guys, they can all put in as much effort as they want but nobody wants to actually leave 4chan.
Even the most "successful" non-4chan imageboard, the sharty, exists purely as an extension of 4chan and KF and has no real purpose beyond that. This isn't like Japan where there's a bunch of niche circles that maybe 6-10 people occupy, because people always want constant engagement and don't want to go to more than a handful of sites to get that.
On pre-2000s threads though, these have always sucked. It's mostly just people posting the same few anime with the same few screencaps. Like, we're finally gonna get a legendary 60s anime like Sasuke translated into English this year, and will there be anyone in these threads posting about it? Maybe one guy, but that's it because these threads aren't for discussing older anime, they're for iterating.
This is also why an actual /ar/ board would fail.