First post...
I've been around in the net since 1988 (the web was born years later). Internet discussion forums are rough places that, unless moderated, will deteriorate into a pile of rubbish. A moderator, or even an active participant, needs to be thick-skinned. If there is no moderation, the participants need to be a strongly selected group, preferably with some real-life social ties to keep them behaving. Moderating a discussion forum is dirty work with not much reward. I have not really been following DhO, but things could even be worse than average here, for dharma practice requires so much determination and a certain ability to be outside of mainstream. On the other hand, dharma people are supposedly introspective and come with some ethics.
My feeling of dharma is that it would be most useful for me and others if it were non-religous, modernized, open, non-authoritative, testable, developing, and if possible even integrated to western psychology and brain science. And all this is happening, although not in a one single place. Internet changes the scene in that there may now be many people practicing more or less without a teacher, relying on the net for guidance and support. And then people just want to chat, theoretize, etc. So DhO serves at least three purposes: (1) It advertises open dharma, (2) it is a support forum, (3) it's a pub. Could or should these functions be somehow separated? For example, many blogs generate a lively moderated discussion. http://www.realclimate.org/ is a good example.
DhO and Daniel's approach are also experiments. Although unlikely, it may still be that those who tie dharma into religion and hide attainments are right after all, for some odd reason not so easily understandable by young inexperienced western people.

We'll see.