Twice - ur right of course - but there is a chicken-and-egg situation also ...
while I fully agree with your frustration about passive visitors and 'takers', you might want to spare yourself a burst blood-vessel: the 80/20 rule applies to us just as to everything. 80% of the posts are always going to come from 20% of the members, fact of life, get over it and don't shoot the messenger!
The only way to get more people to contribute is for everyone to contribute more, then the 80/20 rule kicks in your favour ... Actually I think the gentle way you go about it most of the time - with acknowledgements and thanks - is probably the most effective in the long run. Just wanted to say that!
Having said that I'd also very much like to hear a comment from anyone who's tried the other sites and can report on quality and reliability of their data ... here's hoping! Totally agree we don't want to copy them,
that would simply repeat their mistakes. But we can learn something about what's useful and what's not.
I'm guessing the #1 revenue is ad revenue, and that is a function of impressions - i.e. passive visitors - not of postings. Of course the postings help, because it shows we're a live community, so more people will come and watch what we're up to, but my guess is they're not the Admins primary goal. FYI I'm here because the site has a humungous ranking in Alexa ... honestly yer honour 'pon my word I was lookin' for somfink else ...
The underlying issue is probably not so much that implementing better search would be $$ or create new traffic, but rather that since the site is already so popular (#1??) it's difficult for them to see any value in making it better.
A concrete idea would be for someone bilingual to make a similar posting on the Chinese side and see if we can increase the weight of our 10% by engaging with them.
Oh, ps I'm NOT complaining about the site. It's great!! But if the question arises, how to make it grow, yes I do believe better search is something that would make it even more useful.
Thanks for the rant btw!
Controversy is another way to get people to respond ...