More seriously, there have been some improvements from last year, as well. One stray tag doesn't make the whole thread blink now, and splitting the thread into groups of 50 or 100 is great over slow connections.
Well, in the old days, some Freepers would always go in and close the right tag. Heck, I did it myself any number of times. No problem. That kind of thing just made the site dynamic and interactive.
The problem is more of a community thing.
As Jim said to me back in #540, he and his moderators piss off everyone. But, the problem is, in any population, there are vastly more bogus people than cool people. When you start squashing the good along with the bad -- as the moderators do and as Jim actually brags about -- then in a very short time you've squished all the cool people right out of the picture and you're still left with tons of bogus people...
That's the problem. Not the software. The problem is the narrowing of scope in the discussions, in the ideas, and in the interactions and the people themselves.
-- KotS