Honestly...I'm just waiting this out. We'll see what happens. The restaurant analogy is really spot on. My somewhat less clever analogy is that HC is currently a guitar that hasn't really been set up. The intonation needs to be adjusted, the truss rod needs a tweak, the pole pieces aren't screwed in to the right height, and the crappy strings it shipped with need to be changed.
Some people will say "this guitar's crap" and return it, others will be willing to wait until they can schedule an appointment with a luthier to get it set up. Others will play it after it's set up, and decide that setup wasn't all it needed. Still others will play it after it's set up, and think "damn, this thing really plays well now."
I've been doing the forum thing a long time. I can wait a little bit to see what shakes out here. I consider it a real plus that the hardware works. The negatives are, in many cases, fixable; in some cases they aren't, but there are other features we didn't have before that we can now exploit.
)Yes, the restaurant analogy is applicable, but right now HC has the feel of a McDonald's restaurant where they make the chairs and atmosphere uncomfortable by design to get people in and out faster. You come in, you eat and you leave because your butt and back hurt from sitting in the chairs and you have a headache from the bright lighting. HC appears to have followed Ronald’s lead for now. IMO Ronald McDonald is a clown! (Just on man’s opinion, but still…) We can hope its only temporary, but I know for sure it won’t be if we don’t voice our concerns. And don’t wait too long or people will find another happy home on the web. Sure we can be replaced from a purely business perspective, but can we really?
There should be a full investigation of the HC debacle and arrests made!
I like that it no longer takes 30 minutes to load each page... 
The only problem I've run into is logging in from a Google Nexus pad - - it just doesn't work. It gives you a 7 digit error number, then the rest of the site is inaccessible.
An additional feature: If you reply to a post without trying to log in, it doesn't mention the need to log in until AFTER you type in the post! Nice...
But beyond that, the new forum format seems to work pretty well (as long as you don't use it from a portable device).
I suppose I'm just happy that the forum actually works now. After such a long time of having a barely functioning forum, I freely admit that this may have lowered my expectations. 
At least, to a point.
The most important aspect of a forum are the topics and the people who participate. And for me, I'm saddened by the lack of participation, with a lot of really good people scared away in the past by stupid or antagonistic posts, and more people scared away when HC stopped working properly. I think of these things before I think about actual forum "mechanics" and aesthetics.
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