To everyones great credit we've pretty much avoided these types of CS conversations here.
The easy answer, for me is...Julian sent me an email with a link saying it was working.... so I signed up.
The harder answer is ...the future, as some have commented, was presented to us to be commercial and part of some sort of homogenized amalgamation of 3-4 different cigar cultures who's only enhanced purpose I could figure out was .... well it wasn't what brought so many together there. It's like the local bar you have hung out at, made friends and called home for a long time. It changes ownership to "consolidated bars" and you start enjoying it less for whatever reason even before the remodel. Your friends start drifting away to other places to hang out. The vibe of the place gets worse. What do you do? This place was the answer to that question for a number of us.
These on line communities are cool. They exist because folks "choose" to make them home. They can just as easily die based upon people making different choices based upon real or perceived changes in their hangouts.
Everyone joins, posts, reads, interacts. decides to set-up shop, wherever you feel comfortable. There are many cigar forums to choose from. There are folks scratching their heads about this place springing up from nowhere. I'm one of them.