Nodder/Fixie Skidder

I don't think this forum could agree on anything, never mind this. But there is a definite sense of exclusivity here. Personally I like seeing new people cycling, I just wish some of them realised how dangerous they were to themselves and others and considered some training before they started commuting to work.

I'm very tempted to get all the qualified cycle instructors on here to make up business cards that I can distribute to people who need training but fear that would piss them off.

Yes, of course there is not really a 'forum opinion' but there is a tone. And it took a new member pointing it out to make me notice it really; after a while I think we become so used to the forum that we don't hear it anymore. In fact I say 'the forum' but it's a pretty small proportion of the whole membership that make the majority of posts and set that tone (I think, maybe Velocio has statistics to prove me wrong). And that tone is quite often that if your face doesn't fit then you are not welcome and most cyclists' faces don't fit. I wish it was about their abilities but I don't think it is. Sometimes the excuse that they are fair-weather cyclists is used, that they have the temerity only to ride when the weather is nice, but again I don't think that's what it is either. I think it is mostly just good old fashioned snobbery; they are not PLU.
I suppose this is an observation about the forum in general; that often new members are told that the tone is just one of banter amongst a group of people who "know each other in real life" but from newer members I hear that to them it just sounds like a group of people who have solidified in to cliques who only tolerate incomers if those incomers are willing to toe the line. The contempt and antipathy toward what you might call 'normal' commuters seems to me another expression of this circling the wagons. There are many well justified criticisms to be made of the average standard of cycling in London (and questions about how another few thousand cyclists would fit on the roads) but often the way those criticisms are made on here - again, the tone - strikes me as having more to do with a desire to maintain a certain self-appointed status.