Oh indeed Andy, don't get my evil words wrong - and it's just an opinion after all
I know a community needs fresh blood all the time otherwise it would die on it's feet. The "old crowd" is more or less inactive now to a large extent, and the quieter members have stepped in or worked their way into the community and kept it alive. I just get frustrated when people don't read Stickies, rules or even peoples posts a lot of the time.
The advent of HL2 has created lots of ungrateful retches just farming for answers to mapping questions, and it's sad, but I expect common courtesy on the internet. Like you say, it's ballooned more than ever with HL2 and CS:S being released at the same time.
It's not all bad, new members and great new mappers keep on emerging and help each other along, it just seems the tides and tides of people who can't be bothered to help themselves abuse peoples good nature.
Never mind, it's the way it is.
I agree with Andy too habboi, you should use as many sites as possible to get the best of both worlds. If it comes across as "I think TWHL is a dump" it's not true at all. Having found this thread just to keep people updated, I've actually lurked and read a lot more posts here and it's a nice little community.
The last thing I want is some kind of inter-site bitchfest, because like Andy says, that's just silly.
/2cents