A common (and very incorrect) assumption that is often made:
Everyone trying AH is an 'experienced' denizen of the internet/BBS/etc. environment.
Trust me when I say that you get alot of real life professional pilots that try AH and have never done anything on the internet before.
I played WB from the late beta stages (.98 or so if memory serves) until HT and PYRO 'left town'. My only previous 'online community' experience before WB was very professional usenet comms. I looked at both WB and AW and I never even tried AW because my first communications (which consisted of extremely innocent questions, asked after IDing myself as totally new to online flight sims) with the AW crowd resulted in lame bellybutton 'look how smart I am' pointless flamings.
Within 10 days of my starting to play WB, my entire house (5 guys) was playing WB 16+ hours a day on 2 computers (i.e. both computers running 8 hours a day, with guys taking turns on sorties - we had 2 active accounts at the house). That's 16 hours a day at $2/hour, back in '94-'95 or so. When the guys saw the 'attitude' of the AW crowd we came across (as opposed to 'ob-1' of WB, who basically blew 4+ hours of his free time a day for a week to give informal lessons to everyone at our house) no one dreamed of even trying AW.
Let me be clear - I don't assume all AW players were like the ones that insulted me, because I've been around the BBS environment for years now. But I did assume that back then...which makes the point that much clearer: there are people trying AH who are incapable of understanding alot of the 'inside jokes' of the BBS. If you take a 50 year old guy who's been flying all his life and has never spent time on the internet, and the BBS users don't know his background (if they did they'd probably treat him better than your average 'new guy'), odds are he's going to say 'screw this I'm back to playing golf' the first time some self appointed 'BBS god' decides to 'throw his weight around' in the only place he can - the make believe world of the 'BBS community'.
The only thing I can think of that might immediately help is giving BBS users a box to click when the register for the AH BBS - "Click here if you are trying AH online for the first time, or if you are trying an online game for the first time" - then put that guy's ID and topics started in red - so everyone knows he's 'clueless' when it comes to the very insider type of humor found on most BBS.
Mike/wulfie