I finally registered my account here on E2 on January 2, 2003, having spotted a nodeshell in my travels and finally being able to say "Hey - maybe I could write something there". I'd been perusing the database for months before, seen writeups come and go, learn how hardlinks worked (at first I thought them wholly random, somehow generated by E2 itself), discovered all sorts of user-written content you couldn't find elsewhere on the web. This was before "Web 2.0", before Wikipedia and its ilk came into vogue. The whole idea of a user-written encyclopaedia seemed fantastic.
And to me it still is. Here on E2 we have so much - we have a community, we have in-jokes, we have a team of gods and editors who really do seem to want to build a better website. There may be fewer lesbians, monkeys, and soy, but today's E2 still lures me back, day after day.
Undoubtedly things have changed. ENN no longer scrolls half as fast as it once did. But reading the writeups being created everyday, the difference in quality is astounding. The bar has been raised. When I first browsed the site five years ago I would check out a couple of nodes, chuckle, and then head off again - today I can be sucked into a whole collection of fantastically-written pieces, and try to provide the same in return.
But the community is still here. If you want to find short, humourous writeups, you can! If you still look for the little in-jokes, the community references, and so on, you'll still find them. The other side of the coin, away from the long and detailed writeups, is that E2 is its own place on the Web, different and special. It's not Wikipedia or H2G2. And it doesn't try to be.
From this relatively new noder's perspective, E2 is still growing and changing. But it's still the E2 I joined.