[Gandalf Parker]

Exactly.
Everything has its pros and cons. I was actually smiling at the predictions of the wasteland death of this forum due to losses of experts.

Elites, and Experts, can actually be the death of official and distributor-run forums. Discussion, discovery, rapture, and answers on the level of the in-game tips file are its bread and butter. The impression that everything is already known, the winning strat is found, the community elites win all the public games is not conducive to sales. Im NOT saying it was done on purpose (I know the staff well enough not to suspect that) but the predictions of lost sales and dead forum were naive. Examples of the pros and cons have existed for longer than internet and have been studied by psych students for decades to be used by business students.