I think deleting playground was a bad idea on the basis that it has decreased forum activity by a bit.
On the other hand, that activity was not beneficial to the forum in any way. It was just a place that turned into a toned down 4chan. Taking it away has only culled the part of the community that were here for the section that didn't add anything anyway. People should build more robots instead of complaining that an irrelevant section of the forum has been excised (he says, having not build a robot in ages. Double standards ho).
Besides, most of the later threads were just repetitive and not really memorable at all. 'Something, something, dubs, lel, kek, images, Frenchie, demodnaryar, #rektshrektdisrespekt'. I mean, there were a few fun topics, but a lot of it was drivel.