This really shouldn't be so difficult to explain.
I'm not against new members. I'm not even trying to shut down headphone recommendation threads as a whole. I'm only against an attitude that some members have that is destructive to the boards. If we were to try and shut this attitude down, especially in some new members that come to these boards, but also in a lot of members that already are on these boards, then everyone, new and old alike, will benefit.
A community is made up of every member that's a part of it, and everyone contributes to it. A new member that comes in and asks for suggestions contributes to the boards and the community as a whole. So, why then does it not make sense to make sure that their contribution, as well as the contribution of existing members, is not destructive to the quality of content on the boards, and the attitude and integrity of the community?
A community's greatest strength is the quality of its exceptional members. When a community produces an environment that drives away these exceptional members, the whole community suffers as a result. This is what head-fi has been doing, and this is why head-fi is suffering. The only elitism here among the older members is that they remember head-fi when it was still strong, while newer members don't have that basis of comparison. But we're not advocating extra rights for old members but simply that everyone, new and old alike, puts some more respect into their posts, and into the community.
As I said before, there is a very real material reason for why we need to maintain forum content quality and community integrity. The world is not a lovey-dovey place and unethical manufacturers can and will take advantage of a clueless community. They're doing it already. And the community needs stregth in the form of expert members to be able to show these manufacturers for who they are. When a community drives these members away instead, manufacturers have leave to do as they will, and everybody, expert or novice or anyone in between, suffers.
Yes I understand the cyclical nature of change, and I understand that this is the natural progression for a successful board. Not to brag, but if you read the threads you'll see that I was among the first to post about it, and in detail. I'm not even asking 80,000 people to uniformly change their posting habits, that would be impossible. However I'm asking for some of the members to be more critical of forum content, and to start encouraging a certain conduct, which is simply nothing more than respect to the community, forum content, and generally putting some thought into what people say and do. When some of the more vocal members start doing this, it will snowball and begin to proliferate. We only have to do this for a few weeks, and it will start to become the norm.
There's nothing wrong about going against natural trends. Sure, it's a natural trend for a board to slowly deteriorate, and it may reach an equilibrium between signal and noise, and it may go down in flames. But we're not wholly subject to natural trends and we can change them. But only if there's more than a handful of vocal members involved, and throwing your hands up into the air and saying "that's impossible" isn't going to help the situation.
Maybe some of you don't care about head-fi and are willing to watch it rot, but I do. But there's only so much I can take and if this goes on long enough I will leave. Many, many people who have made this community what it is have done so already, and this may be a natural progression of events but you cannot argue that it hasn't done damage to the community, especially if you weren't there to witness the process firsthand.
