i would say the noise level on the forum shot up for two reasons.

1. nokia made the n900 a phone. the resulted in way more non-geeks taking a interest.

2. maemo5. it is one one device only, have now a hevy focus on qt and is a different ui concept then the older devices. this has basically divided the community as dual developing a program becomes a pain. That nokia handed out device to the most active devs and then went meego didnt help.

we are right now basically headless chicken, running in circles.