I used to be active there as well (expert in scanners ? :-) ) , got even two free t-shirts...
But for your info. Indeed, i do miss the initial setup that EE used to have, there was a lot to learn there, perlmonks is the only site (for perl only) that attracs me in the same way as EE did in its early days.
Can't we just set up another monk-site, like KnowledgeMonks, or something like that?
Indeed, The best about EE was the large number of different topics.