Maybe if more people participated in my attempt at the Heavy Metal Album Club? Metal Month II would be a good place to start; gather and comment and discuss, even contribute if you want.
Or what about something I touted before, with a slight amendment: a freeform journal perhaps concentrating on metal only, in which anyone can post reviews, thoughts, articles?
Mind you, I like your idea of snipers. Who here knows how to use a gun?
Seriously, I know exactly what you mean. My own attempts to get some participation failed miserably (some of that due, in fairness, to my stepping back from the site and unlike the Prog Rock Album Club, nobody being there to carry on in my absence) and I see your King of the Hill has received nothing but one pithy response, which must be very annoying.
I guess it's down to what you want to see. Are you looking for discussion of albums or bands, or a general yak about why people like metal or even why they don't? Or looking for new recs? Trouble is, there are a lot of threads that cover these already, so it's hard to think of something new that will attract attention. Hottest females in Metal? Longest Metal songs? How do you know if any thread will draw interest?
I think you should revive and expand your "Edumucation for you dumb ****s" part of your journal, maybe move it in here? A way of giving people a grounding in the world of Metal, a sort of "Agony Uncle" (with the emphasis on the agony)?
Hey I don't know! You can't force people to take part so sometimes you may just have to accept that people are either a) lazy b) uninterested or c) haven't the time to get totally involved. I really don't know what the answer is, cos as you say there are a whole lot of metalheads here, but they just tend to not want to shout about it.
Defenders of True Metal thread?