Vintage has a HIGH, HIGH bar set for it for either improving existing decks or creating new ones.
As a moderator there and a Vintage Adept member from day 1 (and before at Beyond Dominia), the main open discussion forums should be compared to releasing an article into a medical or scientific journal - if you don't dot all your "i's" and cross all your "t's", you're going to be in trouble, because most of the longtime players and posters will analyze the posts and ideas very critically. This doesn't mean negatively, it just means in depth and thorough.
In a lot cases if you haven't done that (or many cases even if you have), it's not going to look good if you don't have well thought-out answers to common questions (i.e. how to beat commonly played decks, deck strategy and role, sideboarding plan, etc). If a physicist released an article to a journal and the math/theory/results were sloppy, not articulated well, or based on arguable assumptions, reaction to that article in the physics community is going to be critical.
For just shooting ideas and half-tested decks around, we have a Vintage Improvement Forum, but the main goal of TMD is to be that "medical journal" of Vintage where ideas and decks are thought-out and criticized at the highest level. If you can't deal with that, or think all of that through, or use proper English/grammar/punctuation/express yourself clearly, then perhaps TMD is not for you. I don't mean that in a "go-away" type attitude, but if that's not similar to your own goal in posting Vintage content on TMD, then you're not going to enjoy the experience (the community areas aside).
Dante
PS - I can't speak for anyone on a team since I'm not on one, but for those that have internal team boards, I'm willing to bet that the internal team boards (for the serious teams) are FAR more critical and detail-oriented that most of anything on TMD.
TMD works just fine, precisely because of the perceived "elitist" attitudes. The childish behaviors and the labelling of TMD members almost exclusively stems from new posters either violating site rules or posting in order to receive congratulatory pats on the back or recognition. When they receive criticism, they take it personally and they end up here or other forums, bemoaning how TMD "stifles their innovation" or the "elitism" discourages them.
TOUGH.
TMD isn't a place for a player to amaze everyone with their "brilliance" or deckbuilding "prowess" free from any exposure to criticism. It is a site that puts ideas to a very harsh test, and if people don't appreciate why that is a very good thing, then they should be staying off the forums. And if we're going to label anything as childish, it is the lashing back after any sort of success as some sort of "vindication" against the big, bad, mean TMD regulars who "put the idea down" initially. Get over yourselves people and stop playing the victim. The fact that ideas are not accepted on faith isn't a knock against the vintage TMD community; the onus is always on the poster of said idea to give sufficient evidence that an idea is sound. And if they want to explore untested ideas or do a little brainstorming, we have an entire subforum devoted to that.
And honest to god there should be some sort of FAQ or Primer to guide newer posters in effective ways of presenting their ideas and dealing with the feedback. Part of the effective presentation package is having an idea of what is meant by significant sample size, and how to resist the temptation of making blanket or absolute statements often based on superifical theoretical analyses or anecdotal evidence.
