The current description of the community basically uses the actual definition, that a liminal space is somewhere that evokes or pertains to transition, as well as the descriptors of feelings that are evoked by recognition and contemplation of liminal spaces, which have since been emphasized to the point that their root, their cause, has been largely forgotten.

So... even with your definition of a liminal space, my long winded explanation still proves my point.

By my definition, by the community's definition...

This airport concourse actually is a liminal space, as the community definition is more broad than yours.

Even if you'd argue against that, that it isn't abandoned and rundown, that there are people in it, I can equally validly argue that a functional airport concourse with just a few people in it evokes nostalgia for a time I was at an airport, that it reminds me of a physical and emotional transition, that this experience was surreal and unsettling, and that I find airport concourses to be unwelcoming, uncomfortable, ominous.

Perhaps you can see now why I prefer the more concrete meaning over the meaning based on a set of evoked feelings and qualities of a space.

I can very honestly tell you that if I were to return to a great number and variety of places where pivotal, transitional, fork in the road of my lifepath, events occured, I would genuinely feel surreal and nostalgic, even though the physical attributes of those places vary wildly. Some of those places are now abandoned, erie and desolate, others are not.

... Glancing at a bunch of the more recent posts here, I will grant you that basically none of them have people in them.

But they are not all abandoned to the point of decay. Some are, but others are well kept and well maintained. Almost none are dilapidated, just older. I find very few of them surreal or eerie... but perhaps that is because I have spent a great deal of time homeless, on foot.

Seeing places of all kinds, at all times of day, that most people only see when they normally have people in them, but don't when I am there, is quite normal for me.

If I had to describe the current definition of liminal spaces by the last month or so of posts here, I'd say the actual main theme is just emphasizing isolation, an ominous, foreboding sense of being the last person on earth after an apocalypse has removed all the people from places they'd normally be in, like that old Twilight Zone episode where one man wakes up and everyone in his town is just... gone.

But maybe that's just me.