It is a way to prove a point. I glanced through the 'review'...

Regarding HF, it is run the way the owners want to run it.

Yeah you only come to know when you are banned, because then you know whats happening behind the scene.
Actually you can get banned for helping other people.
Bringing to people attention new products which can beat sponsor products.
Another thing is there is no privacy policy. All PM are read or snooped.

On being banned you can be accused of anything from being Member of Trade or for shilling. There is no way to contest it. I have seen lot people contesting it through blogs or facebook pages.

Head-Fi is a privately run and owned forum.  They can run it however they want.  If that way is at odds with what you're looking for in a forum, there are other sites you can go to.  They have no responsibility to do things the way their members want.


If enough people have a problem with it, they will leave or start their own forums until changes are made out of the hemorrhaging of members and, as you mentioned, its affect on analytics affect their bottom line enough to make changes. 


Personally, I think HF is right for a lot of people, especially casual members and hobbyists.  But there are a lot of people its not right for, whether it has to do with tone and moderation, quality or style of content, level of commercialization, whatever.  And those members are finding other places to get that fix, there are tens of these forums these days.



Bottom line, they owe you nothing and can do whatever they want.  If you miss your friends and the community, well, communities migrate on the internet all the time.

The tone of your analysis is "If you don't like the heat, get out of the kitchen [that's it]".

NwAv wrote about the kitchen, so people started buying different kitchenware and drinking different yoghurt.  That's the entire point of journalism / review.

If you're going on a holiday, how do you choose your destination and hotel?  You read travelbooks and reviews.  I'm not insinuating a 1-star hotel "owes me something", but thanks for your lesson in hotel politics nonetheless.