There seems to be a lot of forum members who were last active in the 300-500 days ago range on this list. I can't help but wonder if these people were somehow negatively affected by covid. My guess is that at least some of them were.

Some of these people had moved on from the forum before the advent of the merit system, but received merit because of their prior contributions. Some of these people likely abandoned their old forum accounts in favor of new accounts in order to improve their anonymity -- this is something that has always happened, but the merit system brings attention to when a good forum member stops using their account.

Some people on this list have moved on from using the forum for a variety of reasons. Years ago, I remember reading posts about people writing that they had to look for jobs after suffering a theft or loss, with those posts being one of their last posts.