the great part of this forum is that the producers do interact with the punters. Nobody has mentioned james from Genesis yet.
Mike@Dialled Bikes, too. It’s a good point though – there aren’t many forums/fora where there’d be that rich a cross-section of involvement in the industry. I guess to some extent it reflects the tone of the magazine, too – rather than it trying to be an authoritative tome on what is and isn’t right in the world of mountain biking, it’s a bunch of ‘real guys n girls’ who are enthusiastic about biking and are open to discussion on such things.
As for the astroturfing, I guess we’re pretty adept between us at spotting such things; on the other hand, it’s always funny to see the brand fans* out in force, and then being shouted down by the anti-fans 🙂
*I reckon fanbois has too many connotations as a description for what goes on here, on the whole