You got me completely out of guard with this one, and summarized everything pretty well.
At some point I realized that if I didn't shake things up the community would never evolve from where it was. First because the resources we had were very limited, and black and white photography being such a tiny niche wasn't helping either.

Giving exposure to the unnoticed photographers was always our main objective since day one, but always with the utopic goal of becoming one of the best photographic communities around.
I am not sure if we accomplished that yet, but it's at least evident that we disrupted that stagnation we were in and evolved to something bigger and better.

I know I was rough, but back then (and this is not to try to excuse myself) I realized the project was in a do or die stage, so I decided to put my sleeves up and shake up the ones I actually saw big potential in. You being one of them.
I am conscient that it pushed away few people, and in some extreme cases even created some domestic trolls as you can see here and here but at the same time it allowed us to restructure the community and become a place where people do want to post in and be associated with.
Thank you very much for your brutally honest opinion and opening up the way you did here.
You're one of the good guys.