I have a hard time understanding why people are so annoyed by this forum, to the point of leaving. It's true there are occasional lapses of civility, but this is true everywhere, in life I mean, and I am sure the technical aspects of this forum--the search function, etc--could be improved, and should be improved--but hey, this is still a great place to learn things, get answers to questions, and I personally am delighted by the personalities that creep out between our words, even if I have to wince sometimes at the flailing egos and the virtual tantrums.....  Keep it going, I say, and enjoy....

The problem is right here "this is still a great place to learn things..."
For some of our "teachers" like Snarly and BB, the forum software now prevents them from teaching anything.

And, on top of that, what they have taught us in the past is lost.  Search doesn't work on the forum, Google search doesn't work on the forum, and things like BB's shader examples have been turned into useless attachments and renamed so that you can't even search for them.

Their concerns and comments have gone unaddressed and ignored.  They were basically shown the door because the things THEY do can no longer be done in this forum software.

There's no reason to stay around.