thanks for your thoughts, by the way. I haven't gotten a chance to respond
Yes well, when my response is so long I have to email it because it won't fit in 3 comments, then it's not really surprising that you didn't have a response right away :P

I find little value in archives because I never read there and I never read there because LJ is sufficient to meet my reading needs.
I will admit, I don't use the SGA archive overly much myself, just because, well, you've seen my To-Read list, and it's only gotten longer since I sent it to you.

I rarely go looking for a particular type of fic
I think that can make a big difference, because I'm totally a moody reader, and I love the archives with a lot of warnings available (the Wraithbait doesn't have enough for my liking) because I'll search by those. In SGA though, before I got such a wide variety of fic in my To-Read list, I was more likely to check out Cross Roads than I was Wraithbait.

I find LJ's default comment page easier to read than most archive or personal site pages.
As I was saying to equusentric, I actually kind of miss going to various webpages and see how they have their layout. Sometimes they'd hurt your eyes (although that's easy to fix), but it's nice to have variety. In fact, I dislike how a lot of people will add the ?style=mine or the light format to links, because, for one, it really throws me to see someone else's LJ in my style, but also because I like see how other people choose to view their journals.