the Baron
If a new forum is coming, hopefully we can attract back everyone from this forum who've given up on posting because of the technical issues.
I've seen it before, at other places. I cannot say it makes me sanguine.
As in a periodical-based forum with over 500 active members online, and running about 10K posts per day and close to 100K "views" per day. A new executive was bought in to manage the elephant. Sadly, the executive's experience was closer to hamsters and mice. The online forum collapsed as it could not handle a tenth of the volume. The "regulars" functionally revolted, and three different versions of the previous forum software were stood up. The third version has become stable, at about 20% of the previous volume. The Periodical's 'new' forum is mostly bots and shill accounts and has perhaps 1% of the volume, and appears happy with that.
Other places have weathered such changes, but usually by shedding about a third or half the "regular" user base.