Be good to hear from fresher eyes what they get, or don't get, about this place.
Not sure what's considered fresher; having looked back at my posting history I realise that my first post was 2 whole years ago so not sure if I still count as a newcomer or not.
I discovered this forum during the run up to the Ultimate Collection release. Discussions about what was going to be included in the run were really helpful in deciding to whether to subscribe or not. Since signing up for the Collection I've rediscovered my teenage passion for comics (mostly manga like Akira and Appleseed back in the day rather than the prog I'm afraid) and have now been reading the prog and meg for about a year.
Personally I've always preferred this kind of "old school" bulletin board style forum over the newer social media style. Used to hang around quite a few similar music forums in the 2000s (most of which are now far more dead than here) so the format is familiar to me. No idea what the "youth" make of these kind of places, are they seen as an anachronism populated by middle aged codgers who don't want to adopt the new formats like reddit and FB?
As others have said upthread the social media format is great for announcements and "thread of the day" type discussions. It's utterly useless for the kind of long form discussions like the UltimateCollection thread, the various prog slogs, or Funt Solo's 2000AD in stages thread. And tbh it's those long form discussions that interest me more than "isn't this cover cool". As a relative newcomer to the prog lurking in threads like Colin YNWA's "The completely self absorbed 2000ad re-read thread" has really helped place stories I'm discovering for the first time in the Hachette colllections into their historical context.
I've found this to be one of the most polite and respectful little corners of the internet I've discovered in quite a while. Sure people disagree and sure sometimes that gets a little overheated but largely it is resolved sensibly and without the need for the kind of unpleasentness often encountered elsewhere (for example I will never forget watching a game designer who took the time to regularly communicate with his players on BoardGameGeek being hounded off the forum by some incredibly vocal SJW type because of a dumb off hand comment he made. Was the comment a bit off, yes, did it require a witch hunt, fuck no). This has been an incredibly welcoming place where I've quickly found myself at home, it'd be a great shame to lose it.
Personally I don't find "We've discussed this before here" to be a bad thing. Often there's some really interesting stuff in those old discussions. If it's done politely and not as a means of shutting down the conversation then I think it's a positive thing. Where this can be unpleasant is when it become a form of gatekeeping, "shut up noob your opinion isn't welcome, see the wisdom of the inner clique", but that's not what I've seen here. Part of the appeal of this kind of forum over FB or similar is that history of past discussion and the ability to come back to a thread of conversation at an indeterminate future point when you have something new to say.
