Some ideas:
1) Summers are slower on ebay, therefore slower on AS.
2) ebay must have improved their response time. Monday mornings are a lot less active (today being the exception).
3) I don't think any of us actually addressed "big Steve"'s question (although we had a hoot).
4) And it was definitely funny that veeandco got 3 responses within 3 minutes (it does seem to be taking on the atmosphere of a chat room).
5) AS is improving their code and their hardware, so less problems.
6) I'll probably say this wrong, but we try to encourage diversity, but sometimes we tend to discourage "too" much diversity. If true, that has both advantages and disadvantages.
7) New people come on to either ask one of the standard 20 or 30 questions, which are usually covered by "search" or faq, or they come on when a snipe doesn't work. If we encourage new users to look at search or faq, new users will tend to reduce their posts. If ebay and AS are doing a better job, then less people will be complaining.