I agree with alot of things you've said Gordon, and I've been saying them for awhile now. I've seen alot of people saying they want to have something to fight for, that they want the DEVs to give them the reason to fight... Well, I agree, but not in the same sense. Most of us players already have reasons to want to fight. I very much enjoy blowing up M2S's bots, and they've designed it that way, or at least that's the reason they give for acting like snotty little brats all the time. I've got a reason to fight with CIR and the rest of the Dom crew, and although until recently it's been pretty respectful. Players egos and the smack talk gives us more then enough reason to fight.
What players want is a reason to risk their 4 hours worth of work for 1 hour worth of fun (or not so much fun for some people when they die and get beat all the time ).
The solution is what Gordon said, put mining back to prenerf. I don't claim to know alot about the economy. I don't find that fun personally, and I have no idea what that would do to the economy such as it is. If you want to not have so much nic in the game, simply add more real sinks, such as paint jobs for your bot, and allowing corp owners to change the MOTD of their outposts. Hell, maybe the excess of minerals on the market will inspire people to make things for sale.
Hobby game or not, I want to have some fun doing it. Alot of people started leaving the game after that nerf. M2S's entire alliance has merged into one corp, and not even the largest corp in the game. Almost every corp in the game had a mass exodus, to the extent that many of them cease to exist in any capacity. It started after the mineral nerf.
New Islands will help. For a time. But like Agra said, people will come back to see what's changed, and when they find that nothing's changed, there's just more of the same in larger quantities they'll be right back out the door.
Unnerf the minerals. It should take longer to clear out a square before moving on to the next target. I get 3-5 cycles from most of the little yellow bars. I'd like to see more 25+ squares. And, I don't want to hear anything about "Move to beta, there's plenty of fields like that to mine".