SN is one of my favourite places to visit, so in that regard it's winning and also winning on the spam front because you need to zap to comment.

i don't know how a random 20-year-old would react to it because they don't have old school forum nostalgia and the thought of having to do anything to post would immediately put them off

so probably SN has a bit of a proof of work curve to it that will probably limit it somewhat in raw growth numbers etc