I think you’re overexaggerating the base at Smashboards. While there are certainly elitists there that portray Melee as the most perfect game while trashing Brawl and even in some cases Smash 4 without a second thought just because “they’re not Melee”. It’s not overwhelming enough that everybody there follows that exact wording. Some people who like Melee the most anyway don’t even entirely follow that either. There are still dedicated Brawl (Project M I count as an extension of Brawl players) players, dedicated Smash 4 players, heck there are even players still dedicated to SSB64.

I personally am a member of Smashboards (While I did kinda disappear from there after Brawl came out, and came back when Smash 4’s speculation started) myself and while I have come across some dumb elitist posts every now and then. It’s actually not quite as much as you’d think, but maybe that’s because I spend most of my time in the Smash 4 forums where generally most people there are excited for Smash 4 if they’re talking about it. Barring the jerks that do one-off posts bashing the game.

I also think the people who were doing the research in the thread I posted are those who do plan on using either Pit and/or Dark Pit anyway. So it’s not like they’re making up that they’re almost exactly the same because they plan on using one of them or both. They’re not making up the results to make Dark Pit look worse. :P