Abbott Smith
Guru
There is a profound difference between advocating for a current engineering design to remain unchanged and the practice of hazing. Hazing is the act of making someone go through an irrelevant ritual humiliation to join a social group. That is not remotely the same thing as following a particular training regimen to aquire proficiency in operating a piece of machinery.Personally, I think that this thread, especially that Ratz reply, is a perfect example of 'Hazing'. 'We suffered, so you must too!'.
While it does sound kinda fitting for a 'tribe' - 'tribes' are known to have initiation rites that often amounts to torture to promote loyalty in members - I think this is not how civilized people should behave.
Wheel flop and steering inertia are very real problems, and the fact that you later adapt to them does not mean that they 'go away' - they are just 'masked' by habit. But in extreme situations, when very fast and precise manoeuvres are needed to executed, steering damper might actually save your life by reducing the effort needed to control for boom inertia that does NOT go away. I = mR^2, and you cannot break the laws of physics.
I think that, barring design changes (negative angle and shorter boom), steering dampers should be 'factory-fitted' on Cruzbikes.
FWD MBB is an excellent design with great potential and real benefits, but you do NOT have to take bad with the good unless you absolutely have to.
Your argument essentially boils down to "this regimen wouldn't be necessary if the bike had a dampener." The opposing viewpoint is that with a dampener this would be a different bike and there are many of us who love this bike design without a dampener. Does it have a learning curve. Yes. So does a pencil if you want to become a professional artist.
At no point during the learning process of acclimating to my V20 did I feel denegrated or humiliated by this community. Quite the contrary. I experienced incredible encouragement and support. That experience was not even remotely related to hazing.