Hi Jeff ...
Not sure about the placement of the forums, but in empirical data terms comparing the web analytics in the last week of operations of the old Jousterforums against the new CSP forums here, all metrics are up over 30%, including concurrent on-line members, members who visited in last 24 hours, post count and duration of stay to name a few. In fact, some measures are up 50%.....
I'm not sure what else could be the cause, other than the deterioration in the server metrics in the last two months of Jousters existence was dramatic, most likely due to the spam and server degradation. So, perhaps your comparisons and observations reflect impressions before that declining process began and the data is skewed wrong to do any meaningful comparisons for a while yet.
We're open to suggestions to improve the metrics further.
Hope that helps the analysis ...
Regards,
Badger