As per my initial post, we have always had both techy stuff and social stuff, and we still do have, but the percentage of each has shifted.

Also we now have situations where certain users have developed strong feelings about other users and let that interfere with the quality of their posts I think too, often I see people arguing not because they feel strongly about a point but rather because they feel strongly about the person who is making it, the moment that happens, the users doing so are dragging the forum down with their own personal issues IMHO.
Its a shame more people cant be more objective in their posts I reckon, but then maybe other people feel totally the opposite and actually like being part of cliques etc in the first place
For a perfect example go and look at my thread about our workshop, loads of utter wallys with nothing whatsoever useful to say desperately trying to just jump on a bandwagon and bitch for the sake of it even though what they are saying isnt even accurate just because they dont like the fact that in the past Ive corrected them on something or they didnt like my mannerisms or whatever so they see someone saying something against me and decide to join in, if it was another users thread many of their inputs would have been different, where as persoally I just give an honest and accurate representation of my real opinion in all cases when I reply and never let such trivia as personal feelings come into it to any great extent as I place some value on my own integrety, where as other users clearly do not.
But if you have the right attitude to the threads like that and only bother to visit such sideshows when you have time to kill in work or whatever, even they can be useful.
So I think a lot of the time that what people get out of this forum is in people's control as if they dont like something, they should simply not bother with it and go and read something they do like instead.