Personally i feel that "if" a time-traveller checked out Paranormalis, he or she would be looking to see how far our members had got with their knowledge on the subject, i also imagine there would be different types of time-travellers..
Firstly one type would be like an aircraft test pilot, which means he knows how to fly it but not how it works..another would be purely an observer with no knowledge of how a time-machine works as it is automatically operated...
Thirdly a scientist who understands everything about the time-machine and who is on a mission to rectify something that went wrong in the future...
I guess the variations and motivations to talk to strangers are endless.
I have read articles recently about MIT students who believe that we could soon send or retrieve data to and from the past. An article that Cern is looking for mini black holes, expecting them. CERN statements that make it clear they want to understand how to create matter. Geordie Rose commenting about borrowing resources from overlapping parallel dimensions. Depending on how much I squint, I can see JT becoming more and more right in areas of Science and politics - even though he gets further and further out of sync in the timing of events. And I also have to admit a USA civil war seems a lot more possible now than it did in 1999.
So . . . The social TT. He has time on his hands and no family or friends. Takes to the internet just for fun and gets caught up. Wants to warn people about whats ahead. They might come here. I expect anyone checking out the TT landscape would be hanging out around military installations, NASA, CERN. Especially if they wanted to influence the learning curve.
The Observer. The vacationer witnessing historical events. The Historian who gathering facts to correct the understanding of history.
The Scientist/Operative. Trying to fix something he messed up. Or trying to improve the outcome for a disastrous future. The horticulturist gathering seeds and cuttings to help replenish the war ravaged future. The student quantum physicist of the future who discovers she can communicate by posting and email and eventually chat via quantum tunneling.
The Off-mission TT. He has a mission to retrieve an IBM 5100 from his grandfather in 1975. His grandfather asks him to warn his own parents about the future. Goes to 2000 and 1998 and spends the time living with them and posting for several months online. He provides pictures, line art diagrams and his manual! Oh yeah and his patch. I found that so cool. My Dad was an Air force pilot and he saved patches from all his postings, and he loved them, was proud of them.
I guess I just consider it all exercise or thought experiments. A decent hoax, to me, could be entertaining. A poor one was great fun to try and debunk, but without anger and loathing. That got impossible.
It would nice to have it happen again, but sadly, I think that ship has sailed and won't be back.