I for one strongly disliked web forums (in general, as opposed to mailing lists) when I first came here.

Me, too. In fact, I still prefer active and supportive mailing lists to web forums (including perlmonks).

Unfortunately, most of the perl mailing lists to which I subscribe, can no longer be described as "active and supportive" - which is how I came to end up here. Having arrived, I find it's not as bad as I feared ... I wish I'd arrived a little earlier :-)

Cheers,
Rob