The active people on this and any other forum don't necessarily represent the view of all players.
To get this bit out of the way first, because I don´t see the point what that has to do with the discussion at all:
You are correct! A subsample will never ever represent the whole sample. The forums are extremely biased towards the most active end of the range of activity. That is not surprising as there is a strong correlation between game activity and forum activity. It really wouldn´t make much sense for a person that spends 10 minute a day on the game to hang around the forum for an hour...
Which is also the reason why the impact of this forum on the game is very limited. We only stand for an extremely small fraction of Innos income. Basically they don´t care much what we say or do as us being happy or unhappy doesn´t affect their sales much.
I see the use of this forum much more in something else: There is another correlation: The most active players tend to also have a lot of game knowledge.Spending a lot of time on the game tends to lead to learning more about it, either by actual research or simply by experience. The forum is a place where you can easily find those people and tap into their knowledge.
If you ask me: When you come here, your chances of getting game advice or help with problem solving/troubleshooting your city are much higher than to think you can make Inno change the game.
On the upside: Most problems don´t need Inno to do anything, they can be fixed by changing game choices. Even if Inno decides to fix problems, most people that asked for the problem to be fixed will have stopped playing long before the fix comes. Take the spire as an example: Scrolls overproduction has been predicted as a major problem since before the first spire started in beta and it actually started to become a real problem within a few month. It took Inno more than 2 (or was it 3?) years to fix the problem (well it took them 5 minutes to fix it, but the decision to do so took years). There however have been workarounds the entire time and I personally had never an actual problem with scrolls, because I as a town (with 14 spire sets) as well as we as a FS (with hundreds of sets) did what we could to solve the problem. It was inconvenient for sure, but we made it work.
You can politely and respectfully disagree with everything you want. It won't very likely change the opinion or view or strategy of the other person and that's completely fine and acceptable. Attacking someone for having different view or opinion or strategy to the power group is wrong. It's not about who's got most support or is loudest or who shuts other people best, it's about how many people support it or are against it. The active people on this and any other forum don't necessarily represent the view of all players.
I don´t think anyone disagrees with you on any of that though... I certainly don´t.
Here is my take on this:
I don´t see personal attacks happening very often here at all. The few instances of insults etc are shut down very efficiently by the mods here (the ongoing discussion is that mods may be rather too efficient at that, not the opposite!). So the only attacks I can think of are those against ideas or proposals, but that is the nature of a discussion, pitch two (or more) ideas against each other and see which one wins.
The question is only one of interpretation. If someone comes forward with a claim that the game is broken because of XYZ and someone explains to them that it isn´t the game that´s broken, but their choice of actions in the game, well some take offense and claim to be shut down, while others see it as helpful advice.
I certainly am one to point out how problems can be solved instead of always asking the game for freebies. I don´t expect anyone to change their opinion or even to take the advice. I don´t mind either way, but I will always strongly advocate against handing out unnecessary freebies. Unnecessary meaning they could be obtained by simply changing your game choices. Again you don´t have to change, you can keep doing what you do, but you won´t get what you want either. You are certainly not getting my support, just because you are too stubborn to learn/try new things/take advice.
Same goes for game changes that are constantly asked for. Developers time is limited, I will not support every idea that is brought forward just because somebody thinks it would be nice for them, more like the opposite, I will support very few of them, the ones that I think will actually benefit the game in a general way. Everything else I will argue against.
People always claim that they want the right to say their opinion. I fully support that. Problem is the same people claim to be shut down every time somebody else exercises the same right and speaks out against them. Suddenly the other person should not have the right to say anything that contradicts them lol. That is hypocrisy.
So if anyone wants to have a say, go ahead and say it, then live with the fact that other people will do the same.
If someone does not want to hear other people´s opinions about what they said, a public forum is the wrong place, send a ticket to support instead!
Oh no I did it again! Advice to the person who didn´t think they could send a ticket to support with their game ideas and somone else just got shut down again by a grumpy Orc! It´s your choice which way you want to look it