First, as a courtesy to allow MagPlug to stop reading immediately, I am not a pilot. I don't pretend to be in my profile. I am not employed in the aviation industry, but I do work contractually in the industry from time to time.
I want to make two comments on MagPlug's position on the nature of PPRune and those who lurk here.
1. I have been participating in electronic asynchronous discussion forums such as PPRune sine 1987 - that is, since before there was a public access Internet. Every one I have ever stayed in for any length of time has had its MagPlugs (in the pre public access days they were usually university faculty complaining about the vapid contributions of undergraduates, or military officers complaining about the vapidity of enlisted men).
What typically happens is that the MagPlugs eventually pick up their ball and go and play by themselves, using some form of screening to cut out the silly people that they don't want to play with. What has ALWAYS happened then in my experience (and I've seen this dozens of times)is that to their surprise and horror they find that their selective playground turns out to be even more beset by the petty and the 'irrelevant' than the one they left. The final stage of the life cycle of the breakaway forum is that its members slowly creep back into the original forum, or else they disappear from the electronic community completely.
My second observation is by way of a suggestion as to why this may be so. In fact diverse open systems are much more robust, lively and full of interesting ideas than are unitary closed ones. TSadly it transpires that single groups of 'professionals' don't have a lot to say to each other, and do not stimulate each other very much (just go and listen to doctors on a golf course!). This is a truism demonstrated empirically in the psychological research which is MY playground. In groups of highly trained technical professionals new ideas tend to be generated from crossing the boundaries into other groups rather than from within. Left to themsleves highly skilled and trained professionals tend to CLOSE DOWN the discussion space rather than open it up.
It is the very presence of others with different perspectives that creates the life of these forums. Of course MagPlug is correct to the extent that it is ALSO true that it generates a lot of the irritating, the ill-informed and the petty. Bu the experience is clear. You can't have the interesting and lively without the slag.