Its funny this post was created yesterday.

The Steam forums have been down for at least 12 hours today. I've questioned it in the "community" area.
I started by asking for more information and why it was taking so long. Some butt kisser along with a volunteer mod who has well over 10,000 posts on there both linked to the broken page and basically said "maintenance, duh".
I accused them of being butt kissers and said its obvious but what is the reason for the outage taking this long and somebody should communicate what exactly is going on. Again, the response was basically "maintenance, duh" along with some words as to why I'm not intelligent enough to understand how maintenance works.
I replied there wouldn't be countless posts asking about it if it was that obvious. There were some locked posts as well.
The only derogatory thing I said was butt kisser and wondered aloud why it was so difficult to communicate something that should be so basic.
My posts got deleted. While I was there looking for answers, some some other posts by people just wondering if the forums were being removed and some posts accusing Steam of wanting to destroy the forums in favor of the new discussions. All those posts disappeared after a while.

I then made another post and told the volunteer to actually go see the outside world at some point before he dies and not live every waking moment posting on Steam forums and being a tough guy on some forum. That too got deleted but it was expected on that one.

I don't know. It was a simple question in that maintenance should not take half a day if not more. Who knows how many other posts have been deleted today by people just wanting answers.
Those discussion boards are ugly, unorganized and just plain awful. Heck even sending pm's thru there is a pain in the ass. Thats why I want the other forums back and why I use them regularly. Oh well, just wait it out I guess and be none the wiser for what is actually going on behind the scenses.

Frankly, I think the "community hubs" on Steam is such a laughably bad idea. I need to "connect to other gamers that are playing this same game" like I need a hole in the side of my head.

Yah, exactly. My profile is basically anonymous and invisible on there except for friends. I don't look for anonymous people when I am playing Civ, Tropico, Borderlands, whatever. Achievements mean nothing to me.
I'm sure I'm in the minority but all they need to do is communicate and a lot of the hostilities from there would never occur.

I hate them. Every time I've visit one for a game where such things matter, there have been spoilery screenshots pasted all over the place (or in the case of Overlord, pictures of Melvin, and for Skyrim, pictures of almost nude girls)

I avoid it as much as possible. Don't want to see other people's vulgar content or spoilers as most don't bother with the spoiler tags.

The bundles are well and truly over... however if you can hunt down Retail DVD copies of these games I believe they are DRM free (I know the INITIAL Binding of Isaac: Unholy Edition had DRM Free AND Steam key access... not sure about the new one with Wrath of the Lamb / Jolly Rover)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Binding-Isaac-Unholy-PC-CD/dp/B00750FRQU/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1354859694&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Binding-Isaac-Unholy-Wrath-Lamb/dp/B009CP9WRQ/ref=sr_1_2?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1354859694&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jolly-Rover-PC-Mac-DVD/dp/B00475BB2A/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1354859923&sr=1-1

They're ok, though I rarely ever go on them. I think I've been blessed by having relatively mature hubs centered the games I regularly play (Dawn of War game hubs are very civil)

I never use the forums. Just the Store and Library. GOG's forum or Community is my preferred online stop over. Clean and simple.

No, it's nasty - and I don't appreciate spoilers all up in my grill.