Hmm, well, a lot of things are different. I'm enjoying seeing some familiar faces, but it feels "windy" in here if you know what I mean. A lot of people who I cared about have left. I think when I was younger I was kind of upset about the loss in status, but now I miss seeing everything that my friends once made; I miss their irritating posting styles. And the mathematics thread hasn't had a post in two years! What happened?!
It felt to me like there used to be more young people and more people coming down from the upper boards making jokes about magma and being a nuisance, which was just the right amount of chaos. I miss seeing all the threads where people complained about their high school and college romance problems. There used to just be more: more posters, more forum games, more energy, more playfulness. People wanted to jump on a joke or an idea to participate before it was gone and a thread would move, I dunno, 20 pages while you were off living your life. We would have heated arguments where people from totally different academic and class backgrounds, of different ages, would engage with each other as equals. There were a lot more new threads where people would just go ahead and ask something that they wanted to know about or find some friends to try a new thing with, and then, bang, everyone was cooking or sending postcards or talking about starting a commune
It was so much fun!
The reason why I'm back for now is for the same reasons that I liked being here in the first place, though: the community is good (read: really nerdy), people are creative, people actually engage with each other here, it feels safe enough.