Randomly logged in today for the first time in years and apparently I registered April 14 2008
That's it, just wanted to create a thread so I can reply in another 15
This is sort of how it worked for me. I registered in 2011, and have only been sporadically active on the site in short periods spaced out by years. I'm back in keyboard land now because of Ellipse's newly announced ANSI Model F, which may well be the last board I ever buy.
I think the issue is: once I have a nice keyboard that I'm happy with, what's my incentive to stick around and talk about it? There's only so much you can really say or read about any particular keyswitch mechanism before you start repeating yourself. So, every few years when I got it in my head to buy a new keyboard, I'd come in here all gung-ho about my newest find, then I'd get the keyboard, then talk about it for a bit, how it compared to other keyboards, likes and dislikes, etc... then move on to some other hobby that needed my attention because my keyboard problem was solved.
What else is there to say? It's a keyboard. It doesn't change. Capacitive buckling springs are going to feel like capacitive buckling springs 1, 2, 5 and 10 years from now, and there's already 10,000 people on here who have told you exactly what they feel like. What am I adding?
As to early GH:
Though I registered in '11, well after OP, I lurked before that and was probably around at least in '09 or '10. The early GH forums were dominated by a user called Ripster, (I think) the current admin over at the mechanical keyboards subreddit, and it was a very different environment to today. GH was the first forum dedicated to keyboards so things were more active when there was less division. The keyboard community itself was much smaller though, so it didn't take as much to be considered a knowledge expert. There weren't as many mechanical switches being made so most of the talk was about rediscovering and quantifying older key switches, and maybe in some extreme cases finding ways to make older keyboards interface with newer machines (though things like the Soarer's converter were still a ways off.)
When people did talk about newer switches it was about things like MX blues and Das Keyboard, which at the time were held in a much higher regard.