Well.. here's what i think..
CD was one of the first web forums.. So.. mabey back 6'ish years ago when CD was small, had another team started a forum, and for whatever reason, people liked that one better, that other forum could have taken over CD. But now, think about it.. one web forum is pretty much the same as any other.. yeah.. one may have different smilies, or an extra function here or there, but that's not what people care about.
What people do care about is the nearly 5000 members that visit CD. I mean, why would people want to discuess/post/ask a question on a forum with 25 people, when they can do it on CD with 5000 other people. Pretty simple. More people = More ideas.
The only thing that could hurt CD would be if it became unreliable (down a lot, posts lost, unfair moderation, lots of spam..) But, as long as Brandon's the the helm(sp?) I don't think any of us need to worry 'bout that for a while. Now, in 50 years when Brandon retires (
) and isn't so intrested in web programming, if there isn't anyone else to take over CD, then people might move else were.. but that's a ways off..
My $.02