Why not, though? If you came to this site and were presented with a simple layout that highlighted topics and people you were interested in, while still allowing you to discover new content, would that not be ideal? I'm not saying turning it into facebook or twitter, but following a flow that gives people what they want right in their face so they don't have to look for it.
Mostly personal bias and grumpiness. You are, of course, completely correct that it would probably be a sensible approach to follow that format, I just loath the thought of forum sites becoming mini Facebooks, or of one of them rising to become another "must join" network to further centralize things.
For sure. I've been following the folks at XF since they were with vBulletin 3.0. Great developers, but they are still stuck in a very old way of doing things. I just don't think they will ever break out of that mindset.
Yeah, when I first purchased my license it was vB 2.0.3 that was the newest release, and there's still so much of vB's mindset in XF. I loved vB2 and vB3, and I still love XF, but there's no denying it's time for a massive forward step in thinking.