hehe (aspirin). Well said. GLSL is the problem (as Evgeni said, too). Maybe someday. Probably not. 
For Dad72 and myself, GLSL makes a good fire to roast marshmallows-over. heh. Both of us WILL collect/enjoy wood-grain generators, though. Everyone loves wood.
Topic drift: Back in the “glory days”…
Kids/noobs would come and make a green box and spotlight in the PG, and celebrate… feeling they had just created an entire world. We helpers would celebrate WITH them, no matter how simple the scene.
Maybe they were all “first 3d I ever made” experiences/celebrations. Eventually, perhaps, those “first time 3d” folk… finished. Maybe the world “ran out” of them. They loved EVERY “first”… first light, first shadow, first reflection, first material, first particleSystem, first animation, first hinge joint, first mesh click, etc etc. Self-satisfaction after self-satisfaction… child-like excitement and enthusiasm.
Somewhere, somehow, it seems to have ended. Sad. It was a great time/feeling. I wish/hope we can get it back again… with a new generation of “first”-timers.
Having many “super fancy demos” on the homepage… might have been a factor. Simple scenes done by youngsters/noobs… could not compare. Youngsters might have become discouraged by super demos… convinced that they could NEVER measure-up to the things seen in the gallery. A green box and spotlight… might seem wonderful ONLY IF the coder hasn’t seen a godlike gallery demo. Esplit and the train demo… were like that… in MY noob years. Droolers.