The regulars do get "klicky" and it can be bad for a newcomer. Safety police, regulations police, oil police, turbo police, I'm pretty sure there are even Kubota police in there. I don't know about everyone else but I go to church to be preached to.
Whatever you do, don't go into the "Suggestion Forum" and make a suggestion - LOL. When I started here, I made a couple suggestions and I was told to leave if I didn't like it by a few members. I was told to "pay up" if I didn't like it because this is a free ride here; I started as a paid lifetime member so I kind of thought I did "pay up".
My suggestions in the suggestion forum that caused the stir,
Update the 12 year old software it was running on so it would be modile compatible and continue to work. I did offer to pay for the new software. I was told to leave. To the complainers chagrin the owner thought it was a good suggestion and updated the site. Ask everyone of them that cried about updating the software if it is better now than it was.
Create a "Projects Forum" ideally for long term projects for users to share as they go. I had a fully documented micro-hydro project I wanted to post about it. This would also be a great way to increase engagement on the forum. Again I was told to leave, to post elsewhere, to make a ton of posts in the other not so related forums etc. Again, to the complainers chagrin the owner thought it was a good suggestion and created the forum. Based on the bashing, I never bothered to post any projects in there. And those were regulars that were doing it, not newbies.
Those are just two examples where "regulars" hurt the process and didn't help it.
So my main suggestion aside form the analytics and nuts and bolts of web traffic (my day job), I would say make sure your admins are political "agnostics" or at a minimum allow for others thoughts and don't jump to deleting/editing/censoring posts they don't agree with.
If you have a place for suggestions, maybe just look at the suggestions as just that, suggestions.
Always try to welcome new members (ESPECIALLY when the first post is a stupid question!).
Let the "regulars" know when they start to get too "klicky" that the 25 of them do not make up for the thousands of others, but the 25 of them can easily drive out thousands of others). I know I have been contacted by members that no longer post here for that reason.
Try to add things to the forum to increase user engagement (like a projects forum). That is good all the way around, good for the users, good for the forum, good for the links/google and good for the advertisers.