I agree on all points. Also, I may be just a snob (which people have accused me of, disclaimer), but I feel that because of the lack of comment threading and because of huge signatures and because of the "noob" status displays, it's actually harder to discuss things meaningfully at any length. Another way to say that is that I tend to get the impression that people on messageboards are idiots, and I think that it's actually the messageboard format contributing to that impression quite a lot.