Listen to what others want, in that case, the majority, dont be so harsh on players like Kaz mentioned in a Sanction thread earlier.
If people dont like a change, dont force it on them. If the change does come through, be prepared and accept what the community can respond to that change, either they give positive or negative response. If majority of them feel the change is unwanted, or hampers their playing experience, accept and reverse the change instead of reasoning that we spent hours to get this change into existence. A change is not beneficial if that does not appeal to the playing populace of this community. And it can never be called a growth wise change.
Think what the people want. Ask the vets, as to what will make them feel better here, as it did, in the previous versions. Keep the admin and mod processes a tad more transparent, so, the ones that might be raising issues against the working of the hierarchy, can think before doing so.
Most of all, ask yourself this, "What made this mod so fun, and one that everyone can enjoy. What is this mod missing? What changes affected their (the ones who left apart from RL issues) experience, if not drastically and at the very instant, but gradually. What can be done to restore the fun that this mod was, some time ago?"
I cant find answers to this, as I have been around only for a couple weeks in 4.85 and started playing only after 4.87. The ones who have been here for a long time, ones that left due to some issues and got bored with the mod. What was their reason. An analysis maybe. And subsequently, something that the mod/dev/admin team can do with that analysis. There are guys who have been out of Disco, but are still skype freinds of many guys who still play here. Ask them, what made them log in and put so much time into this mod, during their time.
Maybe, the LN-RM raids, the sair raids on Bretonia, OC-Sair fights, BHG pews. Something might come up, and we can find something that hampered all this fun, be it Jump devices, buffer systems, an unwanted base in an unwanted location or some X faction getting access to some Y things. Something that has affected this mod negatively, the fun part of it, not the lore part of it.
Afterall, games are played for fun, and if this game isnt fun anymore, there are a buttload of games that are available in the market. So, to keep this mod alive, and atleast to get the remaining members to stay put along with new additions, think of ideas that can make people play here, instead of an X game in their computer. Make/ Bring back/ Delete/ Reverse some changes that made this mod, a great one to play in, worthwhile to put effort and spend time, like the one it was, some years ago.