Ron,
I don't want to belabor the points already made, nor impose my view of the web world. But color isn't the problem. There is a thing called UI Usability, which is about how things are presented that make one _want_ to view the content, and keep him on it. A few posts upthread, I posted an example of how text should be highlighted, and is something the old site also did really well. This new site is bland - just regular plain text, in rectangular boxes, more boxes inside boxes, sometimes spaced away from each other (threads) but not elsewhere (activity stream). The word 'uninviting' comes to mind, as I have said, which simply translates to "why would I care to see what people say, if I can't stand the presentation" - that's what makes discussions hard to follow, the lack of usability. If I had to pick a few words to describe improvements, I would use "contrast", "rounder", "logical", "flow", "consistent" - that's the pizzazz I am referring to.
Usability is a large subject, and though I am not an expert, I have guided teams in the past in making the UI more presentable, and perhaps you can consider a couple of simple examples, far less important than the boxiness and other issues I mentioned above, but still subtly important in themselves:
a) Natural behavior: when viewing activity, there is a Show Older Content link on the bottom right - this used to be on the bottom left in the old site and everywhere else, and for good reason: our brains read from top to bottom and left to right in that order of priority (notice how top news on just about any news site are placed on the top left, and the least important content, on the bottom right); so before, as I naturally read content on the left all the time, I could easily locate the More Activity link on the left; but now, I have to switch focus to the bottom right to click Show Older Content, and it's distracting to be doing it all the time. The reason they put that link on the bottom right now, however, is because it works well when viewing on a mobile device, and since most people are right-handed, it's natural to blindly click that link with the right thumb, while the eyes are still focused on the left looking at content, plus that link is very close to everything else because of the small real estate, so it's not distracting. However, this does not work well when viewing on a much wider computer screen.
b) Predictability: the New Posts and Latest Activity links are all over the place, depending on what one is viewing - there is no predictability of where to find frequently used links and functions, causing distraction; they jump around; this was not the case before, or on other sites. The eyes should be focused on the content all the time, the content should have enough contrast with bold typeface as appropriate (see example again in previous post) to make it easy to read (and I intentionally did not highlight parts of my post here, to see how tiring readig all this can be), and whatever clicks are to occur should not distract the user from the focusing on the content. As an example, if you are to watch people who text a lot, you may notice how their eyes are focused exclusively on the dialog area, and never really on the keyboard - that's because the keyboard is naturally placed, easy and predictable to use, therefore the eyes never lose focus.
c) Information overload: the activity stream is flooded with who-liked-what... so distracting and pointless
I could really go on and on, so I will say again, the old site, though not perfect, did most of the important usability things really well. New Posts and Activity Stream pages were so easy to read, really nice. My only qualm really about the old site was the dark colors, but I never said anything and lived with it. But at the core of it, the presentation was keeping me glued to the *content*. This is not happening here. Others may disagree. I do not mean to be a stickler, but that's what I see, and I just don't care to spend more than 5-10 minutes a day over here now. For the most part, I am really only scanning the activity for pictures of music albums, and that's about it. Posting all this right now was a real stretch for me, and now that I think about it, I really wanted to be typing on top of a white background; the pale pink color of this text area finally got to me (aren't we all used to writing on white paper?), and need to end this tirade.
Like audio, we are still talking about preferences here, so I don't mean to impose mine, but since you asked... But if people think this is the way web forums should look like and this is how to attract audiences, I'd respectfully say, please look around for other examples.