I have never posted anything on BH . One thing I must point out, is that the site didn't seem as active as here. As to BH itself, there is some good information there, but , well I don't know, it just seemed like it was all business and no room for anything else.
In all honesty, I am very confused by your post. I'm not trying to be a contrarian wise guy with you. I'm just wondering if you and I are visiting the same site or navigating it the same?
First, the BH site is TOO active in my mind. During the day, there are sometimes upwards of 20 posts per minute. It becomes impossible to navigate. Even this early Saturday morning there have been 14 posts between 5am and 6:20am vs. just 2 here. Now I'm including all threads and forums on both sites. If one is only visiting the "investing" portion of BH, it may be different.
Second, the consumer forums are very relaxed in general and there's plenty of room for something else. They have an active movie and series thread, much more active than the ones here. But, yeah, the suggestions are sometimes a bit high-brow.
My beef with the consumer forums is there are a lot of lazy participants that ask the same questions over and over again. Yeah, stuffy BHers get lazy too. They just add to the clutter. How many HVAC threads can be opened in one day? Apparently about 2 per day in the summer.
Third, yes they have overbearing participants. Actually, I envision some of the BHers sitting at their computer for 18 hours a day with a feeding tube and catheter answering questions. It is a PITA seeing the same participants chime in on certain topics. You don't get good variety when you have people do this. In this way, it is a "cult" like experience for those people, lending credence to OP's original title of this thread.
I don't delve deep into the investing side there because of some of the complaints you all have about "stuffiness" and "know it all" and 3 funds, and personal plans and all that crap. I do scan a few topics and grab them because people are really on it. There are great discussions on fixed income (although I would say we have two great threads here too). There is one user, #cruncher who lives up to their name. They take any weird math question as a challenge -- say comparing a rate zero coupon T-bill with a corporate bond. Sometimes stuffy geeks are useful.
They also have extensive threads about Vanguard security and the situation with their web site and app. There's a long thread about leaving Vanguard. People are not happy, and despite the misinformation earlier in this thread about the theme there being "Vanguard can do no wrong," you'll see the tables are actually really tilted against VG right now with rats jumping from the ship over there. Sure, every one of those threads has a VG cheerleader blindly chime in saying VG is the best, but in general the threads are like 5 to 1 in explaining the reality of what's going on at VG. I'll give you an example of something discussed there, not yet mentioned here: VG is has just started offshoring some phone calls on a limited basis. People are NOT happy.
