There was a turning point for Jarmo, when he went too far with a few things. If I recall, one of his own mods publicly told him to go fuck himself and left. Of course I had my falling out with him too, which then became us vs. him in a way. Actually at one point, Jarmo and I were pretty tight. We'd PM quite a bit talking, and he was always cool to me. But when I questioned him on something (The watermark incident, haha) he got his panties in a twist, and that was that.
But you're right. Even though it was busy, it was driven by the same core group of peeps, especially in the Jungle. Axl4Prez, Pilferk, Senator, AMM, and couple others I saw over there when I looked in, but that's about it. The election thread from 2008 was massive. For this election so far...two pages? My car forum is the same way in the off topic area. Same nutjobs there for the last 12 years (Gawd I'm pathetic, ha). Big personalities, many of which are quite intelligent, funny...bonkers. But that's what drives the place. Outside of any core group is a revolving door of posters who are similar in style and don't necessarily stand out, maybe more passive in their posting style. That just adds more content, but you need the core posters to make a place fun.
Gypsy Soul is still the queen of the birthday thread, hahahahaha. So weird. I bet she has 20 cats or something.
I remember this. A catfight. That Skynyrdgirl used to post pictures of herself all the time and Sterling called her conceited. That turned into a whole thing and Danny The Top Hat was trying to restore order. MCT took Sterling's side, and this guy had a way with words. The Cicero of the Jungle. I used to read his posts just to relish in his prose. Here he said something like "are you going to ban someone for using a judicious verb?". Since these were old timers I guess Jarmo didn't want to temp ban them, so his mod was left hanging like a fool. So he cut into that whole rant telling Jarmo to fuck off for not standing up for him, then he quit.