When the new year starts, people try to summarize the last year (or even longer periods of time) and draw conclusions. It also happened to me, but not because the new year, but events from last month or so.
Popular forums get sold from time to time, when the orginal founder doesn't want (or doesn't have time) to keep it. The sad thing is that the outcome is good in only rare cases. It happened to something that's now called JustLinux. It also happened to QtForum, a forum about the Qt library. In short, the site became unusable. In this case, the former admins have created a new site, QtCentre. Best wishes to them.