That's my point. We've been trying to bring BC back to its competitive roots for the past ~4-5 years, and I don't think it's going to work no matter how many times we try. It's simply a lost cause.
I honestly don't get this. We were competitive players for virtually all five years I was here. Nothing we did was to restore competitive play itself since it was assumed to be the focus--
Competitive Battling Center. What we tried to do was to make the mainforum more active. In that regard I agree, there's no point in trying. However, competitive Pokemon is what this forum is and always has been.
However, I do think BC could use some threads that are related to competitive battling, simply to keep it from being completely dead. But I think it's a waste of effort in making this a thriving competitive battling community that's essentially a second Smogon. One of the big problems with BC is that there's no reason to use this forum instead of Smogon.
I don't see how you make this leap: "if we play competitively, we become a second, inferior Smogon." We don't really have a reason to assume that, do we? Yes, Smogon is definitely competition. HUGE competition. But small burger joints exist in a world with McDonald's and BK. I almost always prefer my local ice cream shop, Johnson's, to Dairy Queen. Somehow, Pepsi and RC Cola (lol!) survive with Coke around. Those examples are much more characteristic of free markets than Pokemon forums too. Just remember that PC had a successful forum when Smogon was far superior, as it is today.
So...no reason to use the forum? How about this: it's more fun to have a casual discussion with friends than being one of several hundred posts in a thread with people you don't know. It can be more fun to play tournaments against people you know. This is certainly true of a battling event. Even the forever-dead RMT aspect of the forum is more cozy and (theoretically) has raters who know more about your team and playstyle from playing you more than a rater who doesn't have that information. Having a community actually does mean something.
I'm not saying the forum will magically revive, but I struggle with the idea that Smogon is the real issue behind its decline. Maybe people just got lazy, disinterested or both? Certainly the constant whining about Platinum didn't help. Again, I'm much more inclined to think that the members of this forum shoulder more responsibility than distant Smogon (which took very few of our regulars away in any sense, I can only think of Gamer and Vrai). Even without a centralized competitive battling force like Smogon, I think all of the problems we had/have still exist.
We're swimming against the current by trying to make this forum more competitive when PC's battle community is mostly "casual."
I think this is a false choice. How are a casual environment and playing competitive Pokemon mutually exclusive? It is not difficult to play competitive Pokemon while not being very...well, competitive. Competitive Pokemon is just a game that engages the mind. You be very easily be casual about it. That was my approach for most of my time here.
If PC's battlers have no interest in doing this, why should we do this over doing something they actually want? i.e. Taking advantage of the popularity of the server, Randbats, etc. You know, doing something people want.
So PC's battlers have no interest in playing competitively. Then why are they in the Competitive Battling Center? I know the name is changed but it's still the same forum, the same forum that has battling events and RMTs and competitive discussions (in theory anyway, lol). I get that the forum is inactive and increasingly irrelevant and that's fine, but if the the server is a manifestation of the spirit of this forum (which it is), people should be battling. Not just Randbats. I'm all for populism--I know that trying to impose your vision on unwilling people is a waste of time--but where do you draw the line? What if people get bored of Randbats? Will the line be something about how we shouldn't make people do what they don't want to do so no one battles at all?
What I am trying to suggest is that this forum and its server offer people the chance to make some small commitment to battling, but a commitment nonetheless. If people can't do that, they shouldn't be here. We should cater to their interests, definitely, but only within the scope of competitive battling, or at least battling. That's the name of the forum, for heaven's sake. If people don't want to rate teams, they shouldn't have to, but sticking to the subject matter of the forum? Maybe this is just a philosophical difference, but I don't see how that
can't be required. (Which isn't to say that people should be battling 24/7. But it should be more frequent than it is. Or so I believe.)