I'm a short time poster here, but longtime forum maven, so disregard as needed: - Not saying this is what's happening here, but people tend to idealize the tim

I'm a short time poster here, but longtime forum maven, so disregard as needed: - Not saying this is what's happening here, but people tend to idealize the time they personally first arrived at a new community as being the most interesting, the most respectful, the most entertaining, the best of times. - Familiarity breeds contempt. The more time you spend communicating with the same people, the less reverentially you view their thoughts. - Communities evolve, particularly if the thing through which the participants got together evolves. This place is all about innovation. I'd imagine the traffic's growing: - When new arrivals show up in sufficient numbers that they overrun the environment in which they'd have been able to properly assimilate in fewer numbers, the environment changes. - Anthropology 101 teaches us that larger numbers of humans interact with each other differently than smaller numbers. Moderation and forum policies have to evolve with the numbers to maintain civility and intelligent discourse. Still, because larger groups communicate differently than smaller groups, it'll never have the exact same feel, no matter what. It can, however, have the same intellectual value.