I think the factors that are affecting the oekaki board's popularity includes all the ones you've listed plus, most-likely, many more.

In my own experience, 1. I started to like Mega Man X about nine years ago when 2. it was the only game that my friends and I thought that was awesome for the SNES and Mega Man X was 3. commonplace in stores--at that time, 4. the internet wasn't too mainstream yet, and 5. the idea of using new forms of communication with others (aside from telephones, snail-mail and person-to-person) was very appealing, 6. especially the internet's capability to allow you to draw on oekaki boards and let THE ENTIRE WORLD see your masterpiece once submitted (however crappy your art really and actually was).
A couple or so years later, the popularity of the Mega Man franchise really picked up as did the internet's. The former and latter together brought more and more fans of the franchise together on message and oekaki boards. It was, I'd say, around 2004-2005 that the franchise reached its peak of popularity, at least in my experience. Starting 2006, it began to decline (mostly because there were no new Mega Man X games coming out) and from then until now, it gradually declined to the popularity we know today in which you express some concern for.
Also, I'd say that other things such as the growing market of Anime and Manga whether accessible online or not, and perhaps other video games that have also become popular have affected the stream of old/newcomers flowing in to the oekaki board.

It almost seems like competition, maybe. Like a business, let's say a restaurant: Restaurant A's doing well and it has a steadily-growing number of costumers each year - all of a sudden, a new restaurant, Restaurant B, with better ideas to satisfy its costumers opens up across Restaurant A. All of the costumers from Restaurant A are now going to the new one (B), and that's not good since A is losing out on money. Now A has to compete with B by introducing new ideas.

Thank you very much for listening to my book report.

The End.

I rarely ever draw oekakis anymore, period - UX even noted on my last doodle that I show up like, once a year now. It isn't for any competition as though I prefer some other board. I find oekakis frustrating because they are more time consuming to produce something that looks worse than what I could come up with on paper. Add to that that I am a busy University student and it just isnt something I have alot of time to dedicate to anymore. I spend more time playing guitar these days.

Additionally, I'm going to admit, that I don't really have alot of interest in not only the Megaman series, but video games anymore. I like the Original series, the X series, and Legends, but with the exception of Megaman 9 which I can't even play as I lack an appopriate console, these series have been grossly neglected by Capcom for the last half decade.

The lack of activity hurts too. It isn't too motivating to draw when almost nobody else does too and there are even fewer comments. I'm guilty of leaving very little comments on other's works so it's not as if I should be casting stones in my glass house.

I happened by and saw the link to the topic on the ioekaki, so I figured I'd drop in. Most of the stuff Necro said holds true for my situation (except the guitar, and I'm jealous).

Anyways, popped in for concensus, but I'm afraid I don't have much to suggest in the way of improvements... I did give it a bit of thought, though. I know that on the BN RP board that I'm on, we recently got a pretty good influx of members. An RP board and an oekaki board aren't the same thing, of course, but I was looking for what could match up. One thing I think we've got to face is how few people are going to come as huge fans of the original Megaman series. I know it's a pain, but how many people do you think come to the board and even still know what a Servbot is? It makes me cry to think about, but I have to face it... DX

Obviously, a redesign of any themes to incorporate the new series won't bring about a revolution of the board, though. Ultimately, I think that the community itself has to make the push (after all, if you're offered real cash prizes and that didn't work, I'd personally be stumped on what to do on your end). The only way I've seen the RP I'm in get members is when the odd member shows up, sees cool stuff, and convinces his friends to come (notably, regardless of whether they know the series or not). It's a catch 22, obviously, but people are really more hesitant to join a board when they look at the first page and think that they're going to be waiting weeks to interact with anyone...

I can't really think of what to offer in the way of incentives, I'm afraid. When you get down to it, the latest generation of Megaman (Star Force) frankly just doesn't seem to inspire the same rush to a Megaman oekaki as had existed in the past, and until something happens on that end a lull is inevitable...

Well, I wish I could have been more helpful, and I'll be hoping for the oekaki's continued vitality. Maybe I'll try the "put something in yourself" route I just preached and try to make some comments? Although I hardly feel qualified with how sloppy I've gotten... ^^;

Yeah, I was stupid and forgot my password. (seriously I dunno what it is)

But besides that, good ol X Prime said it best. Now is the age of Twitter and Facebook and Deviantart--giant "communities" that aren't really communities at all, and just attract heaping mounds of idiots.

But, the idiots keep people coming back for more, since the idiots actually interact with others. I haven't seen any Megaman boards have much traffic lately, except Rockman Perfect Memories I think, the Board of Weeaboos. But yeah, Star Force sucks, lets all admit that.

Most oekaki boards in general I go to, are at a dead silence right now. Well, one just up and died cause the maintainer didn't know how to run SQL. Lol. The other was taken over by nazi mods. A pokemon one I just lurk at, dead..one post a month if I'm lucky. Mine, only I use so of course it's dead, I'm busy and all.

Oh lord I am rambling.

But yeah, oekakis in general seem to be dying off unfortunately. So are messageboards even, cause of reta--ERRR, stupid large sites I previously mentioned. The laziness of human beings is causing us to want everything in a big, ugly package.

I know that doesn't help at all but I can't really think of anything. Just know Doc that I'll always draw at the oekaki when I have time. And remember my password. *cough*

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Like I said, laziness. It sucks people can't even load pages and do oldschool things--they have super fast connections now. I can understand not wanting to on a 28k modem--been there. XD

*Post redacted*

I admit I'm like that slightly as well, as I just told you about Photoshop--it loads too slow for me and I don't use it for anything but resizing/effects now. "Too slow" is like, 9 seconds but that's still too long for me to wait.

But that's art. Sometimes I need to do that right away before I forget an idea. I can wait for videos and messageboards to load

Interordi should have Miku Hatsune, wearing a Mettaur/Mega Man helmet, as its mascot. You'll get super popular!