I like the diversity. I ‘spose it does skew young and liberal, but there are a sizeable number of conservatives, religious folks, and non-Millenials. It’s nice to get out of your own “tribal” comfort zone and talk to people who disagree with you. Of course, I say this as someone who likes to argue. :)
I also like that the community has a respectful infrastructure, enforced by respectful moderation. I’ve been on other communities that have been free-for-alls and typically degenerate into constantly flame wars and trolling. I’ve also been on communities that only welcome one particular viewpoint and will actively censor any promotion of alternate viewpoints. Moderation isn’t censorship, it’s essential to building the framework that allows a welcoming community and freedom of expression.
What I don’t like is the limited ability to style your own writings and the fact that you can’t post pictures. I can certainly understand the rationale—the site has a particular format that’s actually pretty unique for “message boards,” I like it, and it’s not well-suited to a lot of distracted images. But I’d be interested in a limited system, where perhaps each person is allowed to post one image per “question.”
I also hate the main font, Helvetica, and wish you people put in alternative, better fonts in front of “helvetica, arial, verdana” on your font-family CSS tags. You know that HTML 5 and most modern browsers allow you to embed fonts on your website, yes? And that there are many free and decent sans-serif fonts available on the intarwebs? Seriously. I mean, it could be worse—you don’t use Times—but come on. It’s 2010!
Edit: well I’ll be. Just zoomed in and discovered the main font is arial, not helvetica, least on this computer. Not that that’s any better.