alt Hacker NewsThat's a bit of a cynical take in my opinion. For a community focused initiative, I'd say they deserve a bit more slack in terms of expectations of professionality, scale and sustainability. They now leave it up to the community to decide to pursue that or abandon altogether. Fair thing to do I'd say.
Also: the original forums aren't suddenly deleted: https://davehakkens.nl/community/forums/index.html He explains the process of migrating into 'One Army': https://davehakkens.nl/index.html
Why are community and competence mutually exclusive? Also, again, the main criticism was that the machines are simply not useful, practical or accessible - especially for those who live in areas that most need recycling initiatives. Rather than design larger, more effective machines from recycled materials (eg make shredder blades from leaf springs), it's all specialized alloys, laser cutting, etc.
As for the forum, its been a while since I've looked at any of their stuff. But I am quite certain that there was a period where the forum had disappeared. Someone even managed to copy/fork the forum. I can't find it right now though. I'll share it if I find it.