Because it's important that (overly) vocal don't impress upon others and YYC that they represent the will of the community.
Just because an issue is important to you doesn't mean it's an issue to all. There is nothing wrong with vocalizing that an issue isn't important. I'm guessing that the archiving of the GMC isn't important to the majority of the current members. And there's nothing wrong that being represented.
Again, I'm baffled by your reasoning.
For things that are not a big deal, the usual course of action is the one that requires the least effort.
Hiding the Suggestion Box was a deliberate action taken for a reason. If it wasn't a big deal, they would have left it visible to all.
Keeping the old GMC archive was also a deliberate action taken for a reason.
They ASKED us what we'd like to see done with the old forums, and community spoke. It was widely agreed upon that the forums should stick around.
Now, I suppose you can make the argument that the number of active user accounts in the new forums today is a tiny minuscule fraction of the overall population of planet earth. Most people on planet earth don't concern themselves with our forums. Therefore, one could use your reasoning to decide that NOTHING on these forums is a big deal. Therefore, they should just shut down the servers, because out of 7 billion people in the world, 6.999999 billion wouldn't think that it's a big deal, and that point of view is the one that needs to be represented, and is in fact the more important viewpoint as compared to the several people who actually use the forums and thus do care about them, and happen to care enough about them to be vocal about it.
That's just silly. It's obvious that's silly, right?
On any given topic, the number of people who participate in the conversation is a minority of the total number of people who have access to read the conversation. You're saying that people who don't have any inclination to make their opinion known on any given topic of discussion, despite the minimal amount of effort that this would require, deserve to have their opinion, which you can only infer from their silence and not actually know, be given more weight than people who actually speak aloud.
It's like you're advocating for a democracy by telepathy, where saying anything out loud is disqualifying. Only, there's no telepathy. So the people in charge just do whatever they feel like doing, because if there was opposition, there would be silent telepathic mindwaves speaking out in opposition, and they don't seem to be receiving any. And anyone saying anything out loud is to be ignored.
Truly mind boggling.
To the people who don't care if the old forums are up or not, let me tell you, the problem is already solved for them, because they're not trying to go to the old forums. It does nothing to further help those people by serving 404 errors instead of the old forums; they're already not going. But, for people who do try to go, if they get a 404 error where there was once an article that they were interested in reading, I guess their opinion doesn't matter because it's just that one person, even if they feel strongly enough about it to make multiple inquiries.
Do I have that right?