The former forums were at least easy to read. Say what you will about the old forums (i.e. the general hostility in some of the forums and the incredible ugliness displayed by so many of the posters), at least they were legible, allowed posters to preview their posts before submitting them, and had lots of subtopics to read. Even if the majority of the subforums were rarely updated, they still held a lot of good advice.
This new forum is cramped, ugly, difficult to read, uninspiring, and (not the least bit surprisingly) vacant. Was that the plan? I could see why someone would not want to keep those old forums running. To the extent HP cared about them at all, they were a headache, no question.
But if chasing away the few people still hanging out in them wasn't the idea, check out the varied forum software used by these sites, they're all fantastic.
FlyerTalk
VW Vortex
DBSTalk
I don't operate websites, but I've always felt that LVA's forums could have been easily improved along the lines of those sites above.
I still value LVA for the newsletter and the MRB, I still like receiving both, and I'm happy to pay for both. But that's about it, and I don't expect I'll find a use for these new forums. Pretty sure HP won't mind.
