Agree with most-everything here, I love this site for the obvious reason- high concentration of good bonsai artists- but of anywhere I post (reddit, IBC, ausbonsai) this place is definitely where I find the most inhospitable people *but* I think it's important to stress that I don't find it to be "the overall tone of the forum" but rather that there's just a pocket of very frequent users who, to put it as politely & objectively as possible, display incredible levels of bad-faith to people. I'm one of them (those treated that way, I like to think I'm amicable in all my postings) although I've seen the same users post similar things to many others before, I think it's more "tolerated" because veteran = respect in people's eyes but in reality "veteran" at a message board really doesn't tell you much about how good an artist the person is - what I mean to say is that it'd truly bug me if (when?) Walter Pall seems irritated that I'm pushing for minutiae whereas now it's just a petty annoyance when I get accused, by the same group of ~3 people, of "not listening to what I'm told" It used to bother me a lot more before because I hated the idea anyone would think I was discussing things and then simply "going with my gut" in direct defiance of the advice I asked-for&received here, but over time I saw the same people behaving..."in bad faith" to many others and for myriad reasons, and realized not to put much weight on it.
100% agree, and intend to do so! In fact the "why post when you never even listen!?" comment was lobbed at me recently and is sitting in one of the 20 browser windows on my desktop, I do intend to respond appropriately when I finally work my way through these windows and find it rofl!!
I can understand resentment, hell even ridicule, in certain instances IE a beginner posting, rudely, "I just got a bonsai as a gift, can someone please write-out a detailed guide for me? I think it's a Juniper and no I won't get pics", but for the overwhelming majority of posts that are actually about bonsai (ie, discounting non-sequitur comments, they seem to be a higher % here than most bonsai boards), the person posting is posting in good-faith and should be replied to in-kind.