"btw -- I'm actually a little perturbed by the comments on that reddit post. In particular, to say that the site hasn't been modernized because "No one's done the work" and especially "Plenty of people have volunteered over the years. None have delivered" is actually pretty insulting."

Having put in about 15 total hours of work on the last attempt to redesign at least the front facing (Anonymous view) part of the site I didn't find flip, uninformed comments like that surprising but annoying nonetheless. As a full time freelancer I value my time greatly so I can only imagine the annoyance to others who have put in far more hours on the site's design (and/or functionality) in one way or another even from a nodelet to a full theme. However, having looked at the people who made the comments and the forum they chose to do so makes me take it all far less seriously.