[quote=@Halo]
I personally attribute it to the attitude of the old community here. It was a lot more savage, almost xenophobic, and hierarchical and drama-filled back then. Hell, from what I hear it had softened up a lot even by the time I came along, after Mammoth and others were finally banned. The rep has lasted and gets passed down to new members. The Guild Remembers.
[/quote]

Halo's right, it's just that the rep carries over. People remember bad things seven-times-longer than good things (according to something I read in a psychology textbook at some point). OldGuild Spam was a bad neighborhood, home to the scum-of-the-forum, with very little mod intervention except in extreme cases (that we don't talk about, shhh).

But yeah, people remember [i]that[/i] Spam when they think of Spam. Most of them probably poked their heads in once and then never again, so they don't know how much it's changed.