With new members come people who don't know the rules and new drama/possible trolls. The current membership is 'well-trained' and get along with each other. So I can see why new members might not be admitted with limited moderation.
(Not advocating for not having new members, just pointing out a possible reason.)
Upgrading the board might result in loss of posts or worse, I'd rather it keep going rather than take risks where the whole thing stops working altogether. I mean I'd like things to be working too, but I'd rather have VF in this condition than risk it being gone.
There is no place quite like VF out there, there are some facebook groups but they are not conducive to real conversation due to the format and meme-spamming. Forums as a whole are dying unfortunately. Which is too bad because I love the format. All the new formats seem to lose all older posts and sense of history, everything is always about the most recent things only.