I've been on my holidays so have missed this thread dribbling away... In my view, there's really only one or two people who currently inhabit VRC who vigorously admit to taking great exception to the broad church approach to retro/vintage building/collecting/riding/reminiscing - as demonstrated here and elsewhere in Europe.
Somewhere in those beliefs, there's a sensible and well-meant debate about the roles of public forums and striving for common 'agreements' as to the 'standards' that people might go to, particularly in building a catalogue or period MTBs.
Sadly, those debates descend quickly into personal and inter-forum incite, not insight. We, as moderators, try to keep the Retrobike name away from such negative and futile slanging matches, however this has often proven difficult, as the name is sometimes used erroneously and libelously make 'points', usually by the same few guys.
Recently there has also been some willful or cultural confusion between 'passion' for what one might choose to restore and the level achieved and 'elitism', in relation to one's ability to complete the build to a certain standard before one might dare to show it online. This isn't the sort of debate that can be engaged in healthily on a public forum, as many examples of frothy vitriol will testify, however it's an itch some folks love to scratch!
Maybe some US-based builders and collectors fail to understand or recall that the European experience was built on an entirely different history - later in time and based on very different concepts of what an MTB was and how it should look. These days some view our fascination with period after-market items (particularly anything anodised!) with thinly-veiled disdain, as though this marked the end of the classic period of MTBs, or even worse, as though this activity did not actually happen. Again, another futile debate to have in a public forum...
The good news is that those few provocateurs now proclaim to hate 'Retrobike'
so much that they wouldn't be seen dead reading this thread!
I am sure that there are much better days around the corner - as both forums have a great deal to offer each other, not least in making friends (I got to ride Repack through VRC!), swapping knowledge and parts and generally keeping our shared enthusiasm alive.
Mr K