Is this forum going downhill, due to numpty newbies?

Nick if you spend all your time ignoring threads that you think are dumb, if the majority of the threads on the forum are dumb, what are you left with?
Right now you have to wade through a lot of shit to get to what you want, if new members read the "rules" search a lot the duplication of threads and questions can be curtailed leaving you the chance to use this forum to its best, arranging rides, meeting up with other forum members, and having your awkward bike questions answered, before your thread is derailed by a barrage of puns.
Also your poseurs line is just a mean spirited dig and not worthy of you, or this forum. Don't get blinded by the whole hipster thing, people on here are serious about riding, check any of the ventoux, london paris, alps threads. We'll ride wherever, whenever, on whichever bike is suitable for the job...

I'm sure there are many serious riders here. OK, I'll take that back, but I also think there's quite a bit of impatience around here.

Bikes are not easy to understand when you first get into them. There is lots of jargon and different terms for the same thing. Searching is not intuitive. A couple of times when I first starting looking in here I tried hard to find a relevant thread that already existed but either couldn't do so, or, because my knowledge wasn't so deep (it's still not at all), I wasn't sure if a thread I found was relevant.

This is a big forum with plenty of members. There are bound to be repeats and duplications. And what difference does it make if the same topic comes up a few months after it has already been raised? Is it so terrible for the discussion to be re-started or for someone to politely point the way to where the previous discussion has taken place. The forum is so big that that the thread is off the FP within a couple of hours anyway so it's not harming anyone.

Newbies are newbies. They take a while to get things. So what if they're a bit clumsy from time to time? Before long they'll get to know how to find what they're interested in if it's already on the site.

A sure fire way to guarantee that the forum goes downhill fast is if people feel intimidated about posting. They'll just go away and the place will decline. The key to successful online communities is a constant flow of new people being welcomed and encouraged, not dissed.