The content is the draw. Maybe I've done a year of "I want to read and learn about my new car" and now I'm losing interest other than specific problem solving - maybe the forum changes have just so happened to land at the same time as my interest has waned.
Also I am vrey much an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" kind of person, and it wasn't broke.
But I've just googled and found an archive of what the forum used to look like and I think a pub might be a good comparison. The forum used to be a pub, built 150 years ago, nothing special, but a bit of character and charm. Then the landlord decided it needed a refurb, stripped it out, and re-furbed it as a reasonable quality but nothing special minimalist white walls / modernist furniture look. Objectively the refurbed pub is more tasteful and better designed - not least because it was a bit of a mish-mash before - but it's lost the warmth and the comfy old sofa in the corner has gone.
I dunno, I'm not going anywhere, content is the main thing and it is probably mainly paragraph one that applies.
But I stand by paragraph three too... you can have a certain old-school charm, and you can have clean modern design, but you can't have both. I think I preferred the certain old-school charm.