Fora like FT have a life cycle all of their own.

People come looking for information, become more expert, start helping out, get more knowledgeable but are quite tolerant of Newbie posts, become less tolerant of newbie post (especially when they seem incapable of even basic searches), get bored, and need some diversions to keep them engaged in the forum.

In my opinion it is the latter which can sometimes be perceived as cliquey. But without it the more experienced would move on, and the place would be worse off for it. However, without the newbies it would die.

Not everyone is a prolific poster (I've only recently scraped over 1000 in quite a lot of years), but that doesn't mean they are unhappy with what they read, a lot are happier to lurk.

I do think there would be some merit in a master thread for some of the 'first world problems', in the same way BA related credit card or Tesco chat is confined to one thread. Maybe a BA F Service/Offering Disappointment Master Thread" or similar?