It's actually alien ****.
When was the last time you played a new release!
The last time I had a rig that wasn't a) a laptop and / or b) using Intelgrated graphics. So, five years? Six? I've got a new rig now, but the R9 280X I bought still under warranty with a "bad BIOS flash" actually had a bad BIOS flash + the user replaced the old thermal paste with a bucketload of thermal past and shorted the board out, which I found out when I sent it in for an RMA after flashing the correct BIOS didn't fix it. And my laptop heats up to the point that I worry it's going to eventually damage something, and until I got this new desktop, that was my only computer.
So, yeah, not fiddling around with attempting to get FSO working on Intel. Plan on getting a new card in a month or two.
And we are judged by the face we show newcomers.
... That's literally what I just said. You get a sampling of what HLP is by looking at Gen Disc. Stop being so grumpy, it's not necessary to allow that side through even when vehemently disagreeing with someone. There's this attitude of "you can't tell me what to do, it's the Internet and you can't make me I work on important **** here". It's the same issue you run into with all-volunteer emergency agencies like fire departments and EMS squads. They don't show up for a scheduled shift, what are you going to do, take them off the schedule? Those places also feature high turnover and a lot of politics that frankly doesn't belong in a professional force, which is what they are supposed to be.
The solution is simple: enforce the rules, even when it hurts. The "I work on important mods / I fix the FSO engine" is no excuse for being rude. The #1 rule on the discussion boards should simply be "be nice". You probably couldn't even put "treat others the way you'd want to be treated" because then you'd get "well if I was a pile of loser shiyt I'd hope someone would kick me in the teeth!"
The other problem is dogpiling. This is hard to quantify, but... opposing views that are in the minority have a tendency to accrue about ten responses from the defending 'team' for every point they make, and the 'offense' guy (or maybe two) is expected to answer every single objection point by point, and then they are met with another onslaught.
"But that's because they're wrong, and we're right!" You don't have to dogpile to prove that. Just state "I see how you could think that because z, y, and x, but because of c, b, and a, I disagree"
I mean, you can do what you want, but a lot of times it feels like /r/politics in Gen Disc. Free example: Dragon. You can disagree with his ideas about Monarchies being a superior form of government without thinking he's dense for believing that, just because he didn't melt before your awesome display of reason and intelligence. To be frank, he's treated quite rudely. And you think he deserves it, so therefore you're in the right. Which, I'm afraid, as far as your public and inter-personal relations goes, makes you wrong.
If you can't get a handle on this problem ▲ then, in fact, Battuta may be right, you may have to no longer allow for any discussion about non-gaming related topics, and you may even have to muzzle that, see the Gamergate discussion. The only topics allowed are strictly mod-related, because HLP does not play well with others. (I'm speaking in terms of the possible future here; I personally think it's ridiculous that the whole talented lot of you aren't more laid back, I mean, it's the Internet, amirite?!)
Or maybe I'm just crazy.