It's odd to think that we're only a community of 5000. On Reddit I rarely feel the impression(other than when the god damn servers go down) that there are literally ~100,000 people browsing along with myself. I think it has to do with: 1. Tighter community. 2. Active Users. I'm not sure I've seen a more active community for its' size. Of course, that might be a little bit more easy for me to see, considering the site is based around power users.
On Reddit, I remember when a net vote of 500-600+ would get you to the frontpage. Go there now, the frontpage posts on default subreddits literally have a net of 3000-4000 upvotes! Even with Reddit's auto-downvote averaging! I just had to get out, and I'm luck to have done so when I did. I got to watch Hubski grow!