That’s… baffling? I don’t know. I think it’s great that the reaction was positive, but I almost wanted to hear that you received tangible pushback, because at least that would explain some of the stagnation going on.
The more I think about it, the more I think that people who were trying to solve forum design problems did what StackExchange did, and simply looked at the problem as having a non-forum solution. It’s not that the innovation wasn’t there, it’s just that they just completely left town.