Ok, this is going around in circles obviously, so let me take one quote that struck me in particular to illustrate how the "middle of the road" people view you guys. The quote is by Furbs, but it could just as easily have been a post by Tree or David. Ready? Let's go then
It's his opinion. That's the annoying thing with you people, and by "you" i mean both "fanboys" and "whiners" alike: you all think you are the holders of the holy grail of universal truth, you speak about your right to have your say and completely disrespect the rights of others to do the same.
When you drag every single thread down to the dumps with the usual routine of "whiner sniping comment" followed by "snappy fanboy comeback", to the point that we can't really talk about what we initially set out to talk about because it's all dragged off topic, to the point where threads with useful information degenerate to personal insults and get locked, then you're not exercising your rights to freedom of speech, you're just depriving others of theirs.
If you get banned for doing so it's not curtailing your freedom of speech, it's protecting the freedom of speech of the rest who you so easily disregard and disrespect. We don't need your slagging matches in every single thread, create your own thread and have a blast but don't annoy everyone else with a total lack of respect for their intentions and interests in starting or participating in a thread. You're like the annoying guy in the pub that barges in, sits at a table with people he doesn't know, interrupts their conversation and forces them to listen to a bunch of things they don't care about and when he's told to shut up he goes all "oh my freedom of speech"
Well, i have news for those of you that fit the description. It's not us that are intolerant and stifling the opinions of others, it's you and we've officially had enough of your shenanigans.
People will disagree with you and often won't be interested to get convinced, it's the essence of having the freedom to discuss things in venues like an open forum such as this. If people can't get over this they should find a different pass-time that doesn't strain them so much and stop projecting that strain onto everyone else along with their obsessive need to convert everyone else to their beliefs. Have your say, judge the reception and if it's poor keep it to yourself, you're not more important than the rest.
Don't take this personally, you guys have become boring through repetition and as a result you are at a point where you're getting viewed by many as bringing nothing useful to the table, that's why you're getting called out on it by an increasing amount of people as the days go by. They got bored of the "this is broken", "no it's not" repetition, they would prefer a "this is broken, but i have this workaround for you" followed by a report on how it works out, or "there's no stock dynamic campaign but here, i made one for you" followed by some user feedback, like the people who have something useful to offer do in the subforums.
In other words, your strategy is simply getting obsolete by gradually infuriating the civil majority of the community to the point that they'll gladly stop being civil and go out to openly contest your reign of boredom on the forums.
If your aim is to make everyone post with the kind of attitude you guys display then congrats because it's gradually working. I don't know if you'll like it in the end though, because the majority are a quiet bunch who are just waiting to see where this is going and doing their best to have some fun in the meantime.
If they start speaking up against you with the frequency and aggressive proselytizing attitude you guys display, you stand a good change of being effectively hunted out of this forum by the silent majority of the community alone and there won't be no need at all for Luthier or the mods to show you the way out. You'll just be getting swamped by every fed up user every time you speak until you're fed up yourself and quit it, or leave the forums. The ball is in your court guys, your choice.
Mods, can we have a single "rants, speculation, arguments and off-topic megathread" sticky and move all such posts there? Let them have their playground, just make sure they get dragged there at every offending step so we won't have to put up with this anymore?
They are curtailing our freedom of speech by dragging every single discussion their way and if they have a right to moan about things that annoy them, so do the rest of us for being annoyed by them. I demand equal treatment for the part of the community who's fed up with their antics.
You see, it's so easy to play this game guys, get on my soapbox and assume i'm speaking on behalf of others. The difference is i have a multitude of posts spent on helping increase the enjoyment factor with the sim for other people, while most of you have a stream of bickering one-liners among yourselves, so i might have a bit more luck drumming up support for my cause than you do.
The one and only time i actively campaigned for something on these forums, it was improved CEM/aircraft systems and optional clickable cockpits during the sim's development, which we got, and that was convincing the dev team on something which had a real cost in man-hours and money to implement.
I have a feeling it won't be that hard to swing moderation around a bit so you can't dominate every single unrelated post to further your personal agendas, since it costs nothing to just have a sticky thread to move all offending posts to. Heck,
if the mods are too busy i'll gladly take on the job for a while.