I believe the hobby in Australia has degraded itself into a ‘lets nitpick the living f*ck out of everything on X new game and bag the hell out of it ( yes , guilty as charged with my thoughts on WOZ ) and on top of that it has become VERY much slanted with Stern lovers/ Haters and then the garbage follows.
Sadly this mindset isn't unique to this forum or even pinball in general. I post on a number of other forums (non pinball related) and this type of attitude is prevalent with a percentage of posters. I catch myself engaging in it sometims. People just love to bitch and moan and the Internet nowadays makes it really easy. People seem to be more inclined to be quite forthright about what they don't like and seek a platform to express that opinion compared to seeking a medium to express a good experience or intention about something.
I think a good analogy is having a bad experience with something, say a meal at a restaurant, and apparently we on average will tell say 5-10 people. But if we have a good experience we will only tell a couple of people. It appears to be human nature to say what we don't like more freely and seek out a platform to do so. But if we have a positve experience or like something we are less likely to express it. This situation appears to hold true for pinball too.
I guess the challenge is to work out how to make sure that this differing of opinion on one aspect doesn't cross contaminate other productive sections of the forum.