To be honest, as some have said, some negative press is inevitable especially on the intewebz, the best most reliable products in the world, whether they be motherboards, cars or perfume have their lovers and haters. I remember a couple of years ago there was some worldwide user survey into reliability of car manufacturers, apparently the survey took 3 years to complete and 6.5 million car owners were surveyed through a host of different mediums, the overwelming car manufacturer who got by far the biggest customer satisfaction and reliability score was Lexus, apparently 150,000 Lexus ownere were surveyed, and 93% of them were giving 10/10.... I sadly recall much of the focus on car forums at the time was about those 7% of dissatisfied customers..... sadly it's where we find ourselves in life.
Over the last 11 years I have been a member of 6 of the biggest and most well known tech communities around, for almost 7 years there is only one site that I exclusively visit and it is of course this one. As far as disgruntled "ex" members are concerned, maybe we have not always gotten things right but for the sake of a little bad press here and there I would much rather have the kind of standards we at least "try" to maintain, rather than descend into the chaos of some of the other sites out there. I would be very intersested in knowing the levels of banning on some of those other major players, I am willing to bet their banning rates are several times higher than here, maybe in a community with our size and reputation as*ho*es stand out easier than they do in other places?
IMO Brand loyality is good, it's about positive experiences and choice, however brand "blindness" is not, it encourages misinformation, bad advice and ultimatly bad feelings, sadly we do suffer from it to a degree but we are no different than any other walk of life in that respect...... for me and for now, this is my place of choice....... choice being the keyword here!
