I don’t understand why our subreddit was so much more active even when it was effectively shadowbanned for a year and a half, whereas this forum was just as active for about three days after the banwave but now it’s a ghost town. Did everyone return to leddit?

Couple of reasons. First, saidit is a significantly smaller user base. Second, Saidit blocked us from the 'new' news feed within days of the reddit to saidit transition. That meant that other saidit users couldn't see our discussions even as new members poured over from reddit. Saidit is basically just a containment zone for dissidents and the admin know it and keep us separated from each other so we don't form large groups that might generate connections to larger sites.

/u/waltzroommate had the right idea when he encouraged us to move to ruqqus (they don't block us from the new feed). However, ruqqus seemed to just stop growing for some reason so even if we had all religiously posted content over there I doubt we'd have a lot more active users then we do on saidit.

If people want to see this forum grow they need to actively promote and link the subverse in conversations on other social media sites. And it needs to be a genuine recommendation at the right time.

The sub will also grow if more people post content and if we encourage liberals, moderates and Trump supporters to come have debates. Healthy debate is the bread and butter of our sub and the only way we can have them is if people share out to non alt right people who want to engage in genuine discussion. We also need to be as respectful as possible to good faith debaters.