~5-7 years ago, Audio Asylum had the regular participation of scores of industry designers, builders, researchers, owners, etc. Now, there are maybe 20 willing to weather the continual attacks and arguments. Many finally decided that participating became too personal and the PR damage began to outweigh the goodwill. Others actually got banned after having public meltdowns.

And then, there were the real "shills" who actually used sock-puppet monikers to praise their own products. Members quickly sniffed out the fakes, held them up to public humiliation(as they deserved), and eventually ran them off. But, that also raised the level of suspicion against all industry types.

Which directly bled over into another type of conflict between legitimately pleased customers of a particular manufacturer, fanatical followers, and skeptics. Any factual questioning of design principals or performance claims eventually dissolved into personal attacks because owners took it as an attack on their favorite component. Then, hardcore fans felt the need to respond forcefully to every perceived nitpick and defend the honor of their favorite brand.

And so it went, round and round.

It's surprising how much bandwidth (and page space) few people can burn up bickering. Single threads ended up consuming entire pages.