TFN used to be an okay place. It had its ups and downs and there were a lot of controversies and rivalries and its always been insanely over-modded to the point of censorship, but you didn't have to look far to find interesting discussion, and there were lots of cool people there, even if you didn't agree with their views. Increasingly, its become a colony of creepy Lucas and Prequel Apologists who can't accept anything contrary to their own perfect little bubble, and the discussion is just awful. A lot of the more intelligent posters slowly drifted elsewhere because of all the weird zealots there. I'm sure you can still find some generally intelligent topics there, but sifting through the all the crap its buried in....it's just a different place than it used to be. It's weird and unpleasant to be there now, and this is from someone whose username bears a 1999 registry and has racked up thousands of posts there. The official forums were sort of like this, and its the reason I never made a single post there, and now I feel like in the last year or two TFN has become like this. Its sad, because I miss good SW discussion and liked that TFN had so many members, there used to always be a couple good threads active in every board.
Does anyone know what happened there? I know the Bashers Sanctuary closed down in 2006 or so, but a lot of its members still posted there for years. I remember there used to be a lot of people who knew a lot of interesting things about the series and had very intelligent opinions, not necessarily "bashers" or "gushers" but just regular, intelligent Star Wars fans. I don't know where these people went, but I've barely posted there for like two years and whenever I go back I realize why this is. I feel like it never used to be this extreme.