It's somewhat strange that the classic animation community has so embraced social media to the point of abandoning traditional discussion venues to the degree it has. There are forums for various other realms of interest that are still very active and going strong.
Like I've mentioned previously, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are not good substitutes for a traditional open discussion forum, especially when there are discussions involved that have future value as an informative resource, such as history-related discussions. With the average discussion forum, like this one, you can freely browse and learn from discussions without needing to register. You can freely search for specific information, either through the forum's own search functions or a search engine such as Google (this also means that such information is discoverable to casual viewers through search engines). Forum and thread contents split into multiple pages as they grow, enabling one to easily browse past posts. You can register and post without needing to publicly divulge personal information, and often the most personal information you need to provide at all (for private administrative purposes) is an email address.
Good luck finding many of the "truly interesting" animation discussions on Facebook that are older than five seconds, at least as a non-member. Yes, I'm being hyperbolic here, but you get the point. The memory-munching, browser-crashing mis-feature known as "infinite scrolling" combined with all the mindless chaff one often has to sift through to find discussions of merit on a page cripples the accessibility of older content, especially on a page that receives frequent posts. The search function on pages simply hasn't worked when I've tried it, nor does Google work here as a substitute. Don't check up on the more active pages on a frequent basis and you'll easily miss out on things. The Silent Cartoon Fan Club page is somewhat sane at least, but the Cartoon Research page, for instance, is a load of crap and obviously no substitute for a forum like this.
And of course Faceborg wants you to be assimilated and hand over your personal information. Heck, I just checked the aforementioned two pages for the first time in a while and now Facebook is overlaying a dialog wanting me to sign in/register just to view them. Fortunately the web developer tools in Firefox allow me to circumvent this crap, but for how long?
Suffice to say that I'm grateful this forum exists as a comparatively intelligent place to discuss and learn about animation, alternative to the social media mess, as well as for Eutychus's efforts to keep the GAC forum archive and other pages around, and would be sad to see it go. Personally, I like the "backwater"-like environment of this forum. Less meaningless clutter from the animation fanbase at large ("chaff" like I mentioned above) is good. It would be a good place for the historians, researchers, and more insightful commentators in general to gather to partake in meaningful animation history discussions, and have their contributions actually persist as an accessible informational resource. That's really what's missing here.
As for the database itself, the goals of the project are admirable, particularly it's interest in being the "most accurate" database around, and I should spend more time contributing what information I can than I have. IMO, to stand out from the other databases, it really needs to hold firm to that stated goal of accuracy. The system of only allowing users approved by the management to add to the database is good for this, but allowing so-called "researchers" to mine information from IMDb and the like is not. Sure, it's growth, but not a good kind of growth. I'd prefer a database that has less, but more reliable, information over one that is more "complete" but less reliable. A database committed to accuracy is a worthwhile effort.
Perhaps we should all pitch in and help pay for the costs of hosting this site. That's really the enemy of personally-owned sites like this. The less of a financial burden it is on Eutychus to keep this site going, the more worthwhile it will be to him to do so in spite of any lack of success with the broader animation community.