The tone isn't as bad as it was about two years ago when I first found these forums.
Sometimes it felt like it's just a bunch of old people that are just waiting for the kids to step on the grass so they can run out and scream "GET OFF THE LAWN!", but where a newbie's thread would get like 3 pages of those posts, usually there's only like one page now, but there's also some helpful advice in there, as well as a "please introduce yourself first" kind of notation.
To say that there is no impact on the design industry and such isn't for naught though. People willing to learn will learn, as they always have and I use these forums to help learn about my trade, be it different substrates, look at different designs and projects to better help myself and my business. Some people do it by hand, some people do from a book, some people need a teacher/mentor to show them by hand. I don't really have the latter, never been a fan of that method anyways, so it leaves me other people's experiences and my own to rely on.
Threads about the design critiques are great in that they bring new idea and talent to light, you also learn a lot about yourself when you critique someone else's work. You may say "Well, the colors don't contrast enough", then go back to working on your own project and low and behold, the colors don't contrast enough, so you fix it.
The administrators of this board seem to be willing to make changes for this forum and the industry, like the attempt for the board of reps thing, the new networking feature, etc. I don't expect them to be the babysitters, but I also don't expect them to go yelling "GET OFF THE LAWN". I know of no real solution for the "toxic tone", other than to just let the poison run its course, either trolls will gather, or they will lose interest and move on.
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