I have zero problems with the owners.
Met them both, Brian and Scott, at the original PRS Forum events down at the home office in Stevensville.
It’s the bottom feeders and dregs that argue over the color of sky that patronize that place.
I understand about the bottom feeders, they can be downright neurotic and that's why I no longer post there. However...
It's a successful site that belongs to two friends. I try to be constructive. There's constructive criticism, but on the other hand, there's insulting criticism. With my friends, I prefer constructive.
In that spirit, I wouldn't call it an outhouse or porta-potty. They wanted it to be inclusive of lots of different kinds of people. Unfortunately, that has consequences - you also get The Deplorables.
Policing a site that large is crazy-difficult and hugely time-consuming. I've owned a forum for a few years, and spend altogether too much time with it (and want to direct more time and attention to my composing, so I'm shutting it down after this month).
Faced with my own wishes for a nice place to have a little fun, I restricted the membership to friends and to people who had to go through an approval signup process. There are lots of reasons not to do that if you want an internet site where the public participates heavily.
So it was kind of like owning Disneyland, if Disneyland made people apply to even have the right to buy tickets. I was never going to grow the site that way. I'm OK with that, I knew it going in.
It worked for my intentions. But it could never have attracted a large membership using the 'go through a process to join' model.
To paraphrase the immortal words of Groucho Marx, most people would "refuse to join any club that would have me as a member."