I actually joined after AO was sold and IRC was no longer affiliated to the site and I thought it was great. I wasn't even around for the "good old days", but I still loved the site. I got a lot out of it before I discovered IRC, and when I finally did find IRC, my frequency of posts declined dramatically. I visit AO off and on every few months, but almost never post anymore.

We had some really bright people posting some great tutorials and giving good advice for a while. Something scared them off or they just got too busy or a combination of the two. I know when I was in college I fooled around a lot more with tech stuff so I needed a site like AO more. Now that I have a full time job, I just don't have time to mess around like I used to. I still check out security sites every once in a while, but not nearly like I used to.

It's probably just a generation thing. We had a good generation providing great content, and we got overwhelmed by the new generation with a mixture of people sincerely wanting to learn (not very common), and people just needing to get something to work, or trying to hack hotmail.

I'm just spitballin though, It's probably a combination of a lot of different things. I know for me it was mostly moving on with my life, but had a few key members stuck around I probably would have stuck around longer and used the site more often.