Dingaling: Your main point seems to be to criticise the attitude of the Team. I think that before you take such a position, it would be prudent of you to consider how you address people, and how this approach results in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
First you say the following:
The devs shouldn't be here complaining about users complaining, they should be doing the devving.
This comes over as a command. Such a statement is very antagonistic and authoritarian, thus it's likely to elicit the sort of response which allows you to claim that the community is being picked on.
A better way to formulate this would have been to ask whether there's too much other stuff going on which is distracting the attention of the Developers and perhaps suggest that other team members could handle it instead to free up their time.
They sound really jealous and angry and .. tense for some reason.
This is an emotive value judgement, which again is likely to wind people up and result in hostile responses. There was no need to say this at all.
No one wants to work with a bunch of whiners and reading about dev team internal politics and drama is a big turn off.
Again, an emotive value judgement. You go on to criticise the way in which Kindred responded to you, yet you are using similar, if not worse, language here. How you conduct yourself and your choice of words often strongly influences how others respond to you. It is, therefore, unwise to make such hostile remarks if you don't wish to be treated in a negative way yourself.
Let's continue to your second post in this topic:
Devs, team members, whatever.
Whatever indicates disrespect and a misunderstanding of team structures. This suggests an overall couldn't care less attitude on your part. If you had wanted to be constructive with your criticism, you could have taken the time to formulate this better and to research how the Team actually works.
You represent the whole SMF organization to the newcomer and you just spat on my face and start doing semantics. Who are you to call someone "idiot"? Are you a better person? You, sir, are a neckbeard and not a gentleman. Hows that for an insult?
You accuse Kindred of being rude, and decide to be rude back. If you feel a Team member, or anyone else here, is out of line, the report to moderator button is how to proceed. Fighting fire with fire does not work, and it is not going to be allowed to continue, as I will come to at the end of my post.
Here's a free tip: stop calling your community "whiners". What an absolutely horrible, elitist and condescending paternalistic approach.
Yet, you used the very same word when referring to the community in your first post in this topic. You thus present yourself as being someone who does practise what he preaches.
As a final note to you, please avoid responding to any of my points. They are purely for you to reflect on. You may well disagree, but this this topic is not the place to express any more of these views, as you will see in my moderation note at the end of this post.
As for new support staff, there are two ways of hiring: Either get people to apply or promote them. Both solutions requires a group of staff to review the potential staff to see if they're worthy enough as support staff to be added.
We already have systems in place on the Team for recruiting new members. The problem is that there are almost no suitable candidates who are available to join the Team at this time. To respond to your earlier comment, as it's related to this, the lack of personnel is the major factor as to why development on 2.1 cannot be speeded up. There simply are not enough personnel for it to go any faster.
This final comment is for everyone posting in , thinking of posting in, or reading this topic. There will be no more allowances for insulting, flaming, flame baiting, trolling, or any other type of behaviour similar to this. The topic is supposed to be for cordial discussion about the future development of SMF, and this is what it is going to return to.
Anyone who has issues with how someone is posting here needs to use the report to moderator button, and not to get involved in personal attacks or respond to what they perceive to be a personal attack. The report to moderator button is there to handle these issues. Please use it.
Any posts which are adjudged to be in breach of the standard expected will be deleted without notification and members who consistently break these etiquette rules will be warned.
I hope that makes thing clear.
Please now return to civil and cordial discussion of SMF's future development. Thank you 
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