Kyoji missed out on the fact (although maybe in his taste he did it on purpose) that serifs do not look good for computer material and shall only be used for printouts.That's a huge generalization, just look at Kyoji's sig for example, the serif fonts are very much in place there.
other than that i thought most entries lacked a certain style or were too colorful, too dark, too bright, too simple.
take a look at yaxay.com for example. that is good design, my friends.
I agree with you on the first part, but yaxay.com isn't an example of good design - it's an example of trendwhoreism from back in 2002. These days, the "3D-lookalike-but-actually-very-2D"-looks are kind of outdated (especially with all of those unnecessary details & unless done right like @IGN.com). That, and they take way too long to load, especially on a forum.[/opinion]