I can't really say I'm the biggest fan of the new forums. The new website seems rather nice, but I find using the new forums to be a tad difficult. Most the text seems to be jumbled up too much, making it difficult to immediately parse the information I need. Also, a list of online users, as well as a "Whose Online" page seems to have been removed (or at least not obvious). Though, maybe some people like the idea that they can't be stalked anymore. The main thing though is now Alt+S and Alt+P shortcuts for Post (Save) and Preview have been removed, and for a keyboard junkie like me (or at least as someone who hates constantly moving between keyboard and mouse while in a web browser where most tab selection does not work very well) this is a huge regression. (See, just now I tried to hit Alt+S and nothing...)
On the surface, I agree with you. The forum is currently a bit clunky and missing features. However, its potential is really very impressive, and we are still working on it. Joel's ongoing thread about features/issues/etc is a great place to chat with him about what isn't happening and what should be happening.
Think of this as playtesting a forum. We have the chance to make it whatever we want it to be. Let's get all of the awesome parts of the old forum and improve on them. We can do whatever we want with this forum, we just have to do a bit of work for it, and it's thrilling to me how much the forum is now integrated with the rest of the site.
Well, I figure if I voice my critisisms, then those parts may get fixed, and when combined with the good parts, should make it better, I'd guess. (Blah, once again, no Alt + S... Though, I just noticed on the bottom an HTML scope thing like I ususally see in Visual Studio Web Developer... very nice.)