I had an article directory that grew to very large content counts (all user generated content). The site went from 0 to 100,000+ articles in Wordpress in a single year. Eventually, the site got to the point that I couldn't monetize it enough compared to the hosting overhead needed to keep it running, so I shut it down. I ran into a similar issue you were having, though a month ago with this site. Those two weren't ranking like I was expecting them to.