Just discovered this thread (in fact this entire part of the board, up to now I've lurked only in the DT part of the board).
There are a few disparaging comments here re: Mike Portnoy's forum, and the people who stay "loyal" (not my word, which is daft in this context, but it's been used here a few times) to him, and as one of the more prolific posters on his board, I want to make a few comments.
Nobody - not even his most devoted, servile, willfully-blind-to-his-foibles fans - would deny that Mike does not always handle criticism in an appropriate way. He lets the occasional negative comment get to him far more than it should, but that's not uncommon for his personality type. He obviously has a very large and sensitive ego (this isn't necessarily a bad thing), he can be histrionic, he can be narcissistic, he can be petulant, he is totally confident that his way of doing things is the one right way, and he seems to have the art of passive-aggression down to a science; but he is who he is. I don't want to go all armchair-psychologist here, but it's that kind of character which was necessary to help get a band like Dream Theater up and running, and keep it running; it was that kind of character which wrote the parts he did. There are many, many artists throughout history who were, to varying degrees, less than exemplary human beings, as we all are.
I'm not suggesting Portnoy should get a free pass when he (sometimes) behaves the way he does. I am one of his biggest fans, probably one of those "asslickers" who get laughed at on other forums (not this one, generally), but even I will say (and did say at the time, to his wife no less on his forum) that his behaviour immediately following the DT split was inappropriate. But the man was hurting and reacted in the way he knew how to. That leads onto the MP.com...
Someone above has written about the moderator Nippet's response to his post about MP threads. I agree that Nippet's post was perhaps not properly thought-through (this board, DTF, has always been VERY respectful to Mike, even when it had every right to be annoyed with him), but you have to see it from the MP.com mods' point of view. Every day some wanker goes into the DT thread and posts some shit about Portnoy, and they have so much crap to deal with. It's probably just easier for them to keep all DT discussion in one place. Generally, I have never experienced any kind of actual censorship (in the sense of suppression of opinions) in that DT thread, all discussion of Portnoy, both positive and constructively critical, is welcomed.
Just wanted to note this stuff down and make the case for one of the "loyal MP sycophants".