Small Fryz took the words right out of my mouth (in all his posts here) before I even thought about having the balls to speak them (so thanks Fryzy!). There was indeed something about GTP that I'd
felt was less appealing (and hence my slow disappearance over the last few months), but just hadn't known the extent to which others felt it too. The apparent change in the sterility of the site and added PC-ness/touchyness of the modding seems to have gotten a little more obvious in recent times. When I joined, I thought bannings were a HUGE deal, but I know loads of people who've been banned, come back etc.. This is AFTER being decent non-banned members for a LONG time previously. All of a sudden certain people aren't tolerated... I'm not saying names, but its just something I've noticed that shows the change in the modding style. Whether this is in line (and hence ok) with the increase of the immaturity of members or not seems a very hard and impossible thing for me to know for sure.
I
feel the community isn't quite as strong and.. erm
boisterous as it was (even a year ago - for whatever reason) and the mods far more strict and less
transparent in their existence shall we say - giving the place an overall loss of FUN - leaving only the core "information source" function of GTPlanet that kept me visiting recently (best source of auto news pretty much). I know it's not really any one mod's fault, but this is just the way it seems to be going.
At least the very existence of this thread and the responses therein shows that this community IS still the mature (well, mostly) and strong family it was not so long ago - we
do just need to be given
enough rope, as it were. I don't see the core group of active members as being THAT different when GTPlanet seemed more fun and better - but I HAVE noticed a change in moderating style, that may be totally in line with the hurly burly of the newbie-central GT4 section, but perhaps slightly too hardcore to be carried over to where the old-timers hang.
Its kinda like using riot-police to control football crowds, but then sending those same riot police into the bowls club (full of seniors that have mostly proved good members) when some old bloke makes a slightly colourful joke. I know this is a little too hardcore an analogy, I basically just agree with everything Small Fryz has said, his is basically my stance to the letter.
I commend Fryzy again for finally coming out after all this time (sorry to phrase it like that

) and putting some tricky subject matter into good words.