At the risk of sounding like an elitist I will tell you my thoughts on this forum in its infancy. I have no intention of insulting anybody, but if I do I'm sorry.
Back in 2001 when this forum was born there was a very small group of members as compared to today. With the forum being small and intimate, the postings moved at a much slower pace as there just weren't as many people posting. With the size and speed of the forum, when you logged on you could catch up on a lot as it was so much easier reading what was posted.
The forum had a character to it, mainly due to its size. It seemed to be a close-knit community where it appeared everybody for the most part knew everybody else to some degree. And what made this forum special to me was two-fold: for one, I feel the conversations were deeper and more intellectual. But I want to explain so as not to sound like trashing the current forum. I think that would happen to any forum - with so many people now on the forum (a city as compared to when the forum first started) everything goes too fast, plus there just isn't time to wade through everything posted, and thus I had this feeling to quickly log on to take a look and then leave. Anyways, the conversations in the early days would go on for pages, and many single posts were mini compositions in themselves. There were so many characters - Satori, Misanthrope to name a few. We had some battles - I had a battle with Janet, probably my only internet fight ever. I felt I got to know people on the forum, even though I know that's not true - I only knew people through the typed words on my screen. Regardless, I felt close in an internet sort of way with may people on the forum. The other reason the forum was special to me was at that time we were going through difficult family times, and this forum and its members provided mental help - stability, kindness, compassion, etc.
Then it grew and sped up. From my eyes, the conversations became simpler, and then repetetive. With so many people just not taking the time to use the search function (I'm a culprit too), the same question could be asked a half dozen times. All of that meant an afternoons worth of posting took up an entire page of threads. I notice many threads have only a handful of responses - in the "old days" threads could go on for weeks. Deep stuff - religion, family, etc. I liked it.
So to fault this forum specifically for how I feel about it now is not what I'm doing. It's forums and the internet in general - it's gotten big and fast. And it's hard to find the time to get caught up in it. Back in the beginning of this forum, it could take me 1/2 hour to draft a thread, but it felt good when it sparked a weeks long conversation. Now, I take the time and within a day my post is on page 3 and beyond hidden in obscurity. So I therefore just don't have the time because I do not get much satisfaction back.
Hope that explains my vision of the forum then and now.