If anything, this place is as friendly as they get, and much of it is not only because of the members themselves but because of the light hand the mods have around.
But I agree that even though the fan edits are not the main purpose of ot.com, it's probably the reason it's gained worldwide notoriety. That can be both beneficial and prejudicial, for example the fact that ot.com is not listed in the official site I think it has more to do with the fact that preservation and edits are done right here.
Lucasfilm is not against Fan Edits, that we are certain of, but they also don't want to advertise them to all the people that go to their site logically.
Parodies and the like, fine, but fan edits travel a very thin line and I personally think it's best "we" don't appear there. The bad thing from that is that this site's main premise gets kind of lost in between and the petition doesn't get the recognition it deserves. Some you win, some you don't, but it isn't a surprise, at least for me that OT.com is not listed.
I came across this site and Ady's ANH:R in particular thanks to a post in the official forums years ago. Never heard of this place before and had no idea people were doing these things. I thought it was amazing and that more people should know about it. Sadly, said post was already hidden from civilian view when I saw it, (Being a mod there back then, I could see all that)
I didn't agree with the thread being locked and hidden, so I brought it up to "The Council" and the concensus from the people in charge of the site was basically what I already said:
"We know of its existance, we know what they're doing and it's fine but due to legal reasons it's best if that sort of activities are not discussed in the official forums"
And that was it. Understandably I thought so I left it at that.
-----
How "we" are percieved outside is quite relative, people here, and there or over there tend to deal in absolutes. Haters, gushers, PT, OT, SE, UOT, GOUT....blah blah blah.
There are good members and bad seeds in every forum, but yes, lately there's been quite a few posting rather stupid stuff and "rival" sites OF COURSE are going to take that to label us all. Just as we do about people from TFN, bluray and the OS (when the forums still existed). It's the nature of the beast, childish rivalries and the like.
Wanting GL to die so he can stop changing things is definitely going too far. As are the Nazi (I was called that A LOT in the OS lol), rape, etc comments. That is just unacceptable.