I was very happy to see that the HF17/18 release was arrived at as quickly as it was... and with consensus among the witnesses. I also feel confident the "rescheduled" rewards system is going to be great... in the long run.

That said-- and "decentralization" notwithstanding-- I would still argue that we need better better communication between "Inc." and the community... like a "system newsreel" or something that gathers what's happening, what has happened and what's planned to happen in one convenient spot. From my perspective, that is also part of scalability... as more and more "general purpose" bloggers come here, they will be less and less likely to know what a "github" is... they will expect a "system message" to sit pinned at the top of their screen while something is wonky... even behemoth corps like eBay pop up little messages like "15:44 UTC: certain aspects of search are not currently working properly; support is working on the problem." This stuff is NOT rocket science... and it is essential (from a public relations angle) to keeping confidence in the site high at all times.

But other than that, yes the future does look bright!