Outdated technology is probably an issue for sure.
The 10 page thread max before lock is an obvious one. It is a natural point for people to stop posting.
Agree on that one - it is very odd and not something I've experienced elsewhere. There's a hockey board I used to frequent and we had a Random Image thread that had 5k+ responses in it. I'm guessing it is a bandwidth/hosting issue but in the days of Facebook Groups, Twitter, Reddit, all the Toks and Chats, YouTube, etc. you really need to make the barrier to entry as low as possible to compete.
