As a longtime member of the old forums, one of the only things I find sad about Pixelation is the fact that amazing critique is lost over time as posts fall away. We need a way to submit particularly helpful critique/posts allowing them to get posted in and/or linked-to from a single thread when they offer excellent insight on certain topics (such as animation or color). Even if we had to send them to a moderator, if the critique is general enough to help someone struggling with a concept like color or animation gain a new perspective or way of looking at it, the moderator could post it (or a link to it) in a larger centralized thread and sticky it for people looking up information on that subject of pixelart.
I learned pixel art from here many years ago, and I remember the old skin and the old members, such as you Helm. (My username used to be "Ace", but I can't seem to get it on this new board since I lost my old email password). I lurked a lot back then, because reading critique provided to others' work was sufficient and is what really helped me learn pixel art from the ground up. It let me see real-world examples of others' techniques without being decent enough to even know how to start with my own.
As much as I hate to see you step down, Helm, I'm certain that you've got your reasons, and I'm not going to question them. You've been an inspiration for a lot of us lurkers over the years, despite most of us never commenting about it. I've gained so much from Pixelation over the years, and I felt it's finally time for me to give something back to the community (which is why I've not been doing so much lurking as of late).
One thing I've always wished is that users could post challenges themselves, instead of having to go through moderators to do it. I personally have thought of a million challenges that would have helped me and many others, but always thought that there might be a reason moderators don't post weekly challenges like they used to (be it time, motivation, or whatever), so I never thought it was a good idea to attempt to bloat their inbox with another PM due to the rising number of "u do cool art! will u ma3k my game 4 me???" kinds of private messages. So I just sat on them.
I would think it'd be better to just let moderators delete stupid/pointless challenges that aren't helpful instead of requiring them to approve them first. I think this would really revive Pixelation because pixel-art is indeed a challenge in itself -- and that would help those seeking to learn it contain their art/examples in a single thread, and possibly even have the OP (and others) offer general critique during and after the challenge.
(That's just my two cents.)
As for a new direction for Pixelation, I'm in no position to suggest this, but I really do think some sort of an encyclopedia-style approach could be very helpful to the spirit of Pixelation (at least as far as useful critique threads on various subjects of pixel art and animation). I was lucky to be at the right place at the right time back then to catch the posts I needed to learn pixel-art, but it does seem like that sense of community has faded around here (minus a small group of awesome pixel artists), and due to that, some knowledge seems to be a lot harder to come by these days due to the most-knowledgeable people less-actively contributing to critique requests these days. Maybe that was because the old board died and many members never came back. Who knows. I just had a strong enough passion, respect, and appreciation for what you guys are doing here that I did. I'm doing my best to take up the slack because I appreciate what Pixelation did for me.