I questioned things for 2 months - nobody gave me anything but help. I did get downvoted but it didn't really cause a problem.
I had one account very early get banned by downvotes but i created another and soldiered on, even openly complaining about the downvoting crap. Then they took my advice and removed downvotes - later they introduced it again but more for the members who have a higher reputation.
I mean - if you piss of that community it doesn't mean that a GAW staff might block, delete or ban you - the community probabaly will. Sometimes they will over-react.
On the other hand there is a very concerted effort to troll and a lot of the questions asked are not asked contstructively. Like saying "why do you suck" and "its been 1 week and i haven't ROI'd, payouts are down - this is a ponzi". People still call Bitcoin a ponzi for petes sake ... such terminology.
The truth is that people who invested want to see GAW do well - why would they not, its their investment and they want to care for it. A lot of that community are customers, and you can criticise other cloudmining services - many which have ceased to pay a profit and don't even bother to communicate or try to change their business. They just go silent, stop paying you. So people of course have mixed reactions to the very upbeat, perhaps overly optimistic or spin-like announcements. Others see that as you might look at Apple's media machine - a way of marketing and creating buzz.
I believe hashtalk is community run, i see the post that get banned, all of them and they are really insulting, pointless and usually fake representations. The GAW CEO has tried to tell people to stop over-reacting if the member has a track record and not assume they are trolling ... but of course nobody wants to mention things like that. They just want to find the things that support their opinion and ignore what doesn't support their opinion. That just creates an atmosphere of taking a hard line if people are trying to do what is perceived as an organised attempt to force GAW and it's customers to be proven wrong - even while things continue week after week to go 90% to plan.
Hashtalk is more like an interactive Gaw sales catalog. It's their board, they can do what they want with it, sock puppets, banning, trolling, etc. As long as you aware of that going in, you'll be fine. However, if you go into it with the intent to raise some type of awareness, create a following towards a competitor, generate any type of negative hoo-haw, you're going to get in trouble and they'll do what they feel is what in their best interest. If you tried to go to disneyland and start a anti-disney march down mainstreet, they're going to kick you out, same as if you went into gaw trying to raise your own points against gaw. Even if you ask a constructive question over there, they going to shout you down and lock the thread after awhile. The general root community there is very gaw-cheerleader based, which I think most people find annoying anyway. If you don't roll your eyes after reading a few responses after the CEO posts a thread, you're probably half way to creating a glitter-based gaw fan tshirt.
Gaw is going to be gaw, they sell a product and that's all. Hashtalk is just another product for them in a way. It's better to stay on BCT and contribute, it's a better community anyway.
Poll
