First of all, I'm glad you miss me Spazzo.
On the topic of the community, I don't think it's terribly bad, but it's definitely different. The fact is that we have a commodity that a lot of people want-a 3D Sonic game, for free, that doesn't suck, and that you can edit. Whatever you say, there are a lot of gamers who want that. And a lot of gamers are inarticulate morons. It's inevitable, really.
On the subject of the chatroom-it's much better than it was in the AIRC days. Sure, a lot of people who we used to like and know are gone. But we get new ones, and some of those are smart. Honestly, in terms of rule enforcement, both board and chatroom, this place does a great job. You can have a discussion here and expect it to be semi intelligent at times. There's no "LOL I LOVE PIE" posts or anything of the sort. Besides the overambitious newbies with their recolors and mods and stuff, things are fine. On that point, who here honestly can say that they have not stepped back, thought about SRB2's capabilities, and went "I want to do that", even if it never happened because it was a lot more work than you thought. We've all done it, and learning the limits of their capabilities will make the newbies better-Shoot for the stars, you might actually hit one. And if not, then at least you know how high you can shoot.
New mods, I understand what you mean Mystic. The fact is that we simply have a lot of new users and not enough trustworthy people to keep track of them. Personally, I think I'd make a great mod, but I'm not on the boards enough, even when I'm not grounded.
The simple fact is this-look at other internet communities, small and large. How many of them have persisted for this long and are still at this quality of a community. Yes, a lot of the respected oldbies are dropping. But we still have a lot left, and the ones that stay are the ones that we need. Stop bitching, really. Do you think that the community and the game would be this good if not for the hard work of people like Mystic, FF, and SSNTails? What if they had just up and left a year ago? Like it or not, those three are the true glue for this community. We want to believe that it's because we all kept the faith alive, and maybe it's partly true, but think. What if instead of a441 up and leaving, it was Mystic? What if instead of an influx of new users, we had only old ones leaving?
The community wouldn't be the same-it would be much worse. So do you think the community is still downhill? I don't, and if it is, it's a gentle downhill-nothing to complain too much about.