So........have we just got too many little pussies now?
Maybe. There are certainly a lot of members whose feelings seem to be easily hurt when somebody disagrees with them. There are a lot of inflated egos here too and far too many self proclaimed experts whose only real knowledge comes from what they've learned on this site. That's not all there is. Not nearly.
That's not unusual though, it's merely a continuation of the way things have always been on AS. People come and people go. Saws are a fad for a lot of people and once they get the knowledge they need or their interest dies down they're gone. There are always people to replace them. Always.
Same with saw builders and modifiers. They're here for awhile, reinvent the wheel, make a big splash, and then fade off into some other interest. They're replaced by the next wonder child and things start all over again.
In the meantime, the members fill up pages with bickering and the saw builders argue with and demean each other.
Occasionally there are highly skilled and knowledgeable people on here who give freely of their time and advice but most of them eventually leave. They get tired of being asked their opinion and then argued with when they give their answer. We've lost some of our best members because of that.
I've been seeing the same things and hearing the same complaints since I joined in 2005. I don't see anything changing any time soon.
The thing to remember is that the owners of AS don't have any real interest in the site's quality of content. They're interested in advertising revenue and that's all they really care about. It's a business to them, nothing more. Lots of threads with lots of conversation equals a lot of site traffic and that's what the advertisers want to see. The owners, to a certain extent,
encourage the arguing and fighting and rude behavior. It creates traffic. It creates numbers. As long as the numbers are there the owners don't care about the content.
So, those among you who are offended by what goes on here can keep whining and trying to get things to change or you can just accept it for what it is. Or you can get mad and leave. Your replacement is just around the corner.
It's still the best forum for a broad range of topics and expertise. You just have to wade through some crap to find the good stuff.
Deal with it.