Apologies for not replying sooner, had a busy couple of days.
I just feel that that whilst you have a low user rate, that having things in a single forum allows everybody to see every post and people are more inclined to comment on topics outside of their particular comfort zone.
At present you have a post here and a post there but you have to navigate into one forum and then sometimes into a sub-forum inside. Every additional click and load increases the time between user and post.
Though the categerisation is an obsessive-compulsives dream the end effect I feel is to divide an already small userbase which I feel is counterproductive to creating a community.
Take NeoGAF as an example, there are 2,205 users on there as I type this yet they only split their forum into 3 - gaming, online and Off topic. I read stories about games for consoles I don't own and participate in discussions outside of my PS3 comfort zone, something I wouldn't do here at the moment because I'll never go looking through the sub-forums that aren't relevant to me.
A forum thats threads move at a decent pace encourages more users to join and contribute, with the posts being spread over so many sub-forums it makes the forum look like it moves much slower and nobody likes feeling like they are talking to themselves.
I've worked in nightclub promotions for a long time and have learnt that 80 people in a club sat at tables and stood round looks bare and people go home and tell people it was poor, the same 80 people in the same club together on the dancefloor is a party and they go home and tell people it was great and next time theres a 100 people, I think this principle can be applied to internet forums.
Sorry if that reads like waffle but its early and the coffees not quite kicked in yet!
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