@RobertTaylor is not saying the community is unfriendly, he's saying someone else said so. I think he refers to
this comment in Liliputing. (2020-12-30)
These days this thing is really only a fan’s only machine for people who frequent the Pyra forums (which are honestly hosting a somewhat unfriendly atmosphere nowadays) and people with more money than sense.
I think he might have been referring to racist comments or so (that were later stronger moderated IIRC). I can see how that may be unwelcoming to some. It's not nice to hear to me either. But I guess something of what I say is not nice to others sometimes, so I try to bear with it. Still human rights are human rights and opinions are opinions. But opinions on religion, spirituality, politics or economy, even those not justifying or promoting abuses against human rights, is still maybe not what people expect to find in such a forum. I think it's right to have them, at least contained in avoidable threads, but I can understand it's surprising to some.
It may also be referring to another trait that isn't really unfriendly but niche. I remember to have also felt it at the start. The community can seem somewhat closed and strange to strangers. Not everybody out there had a Pandora, or loves retro games, or is into Linux... And many many people outside this forum don't have an idea of the constraints of designing hardware for small production batches and with limited development budget. So they initially compare the Pyra offer with particular features of other devices in the market and might find it lacking. Then they see the forums full of people that value the combination of Pyra features, are aware of the drawbacks of others devices that might beat the Pyra in one of those features, but lack in others, and read that criticism is quite often frowned upon (I resented that a long time ago but now I'm doing it myself, because time being exposed to quite transparent information on the development process make one empathic with the developers), and lastly the general public is not used to have faith that any software problem will likely be resolved by the community some time after hardware release, that is very logical to free software people but quite arcane to the general consumer, which is used to be lied before buying and deceived after it when it gets software not only lacking but never really improved (sometimes incuding antifeatures in updates if any). Here they are told the nacked truth before buying and told to expect improving software with time. They may think "dear God if that's what they're selling me, how will be what I'd finally get?". To such a consumer the attitude here must look like blind faith. Considering it all together the external observer may honestly think this is a fan club that doesn't tolerate nonbelievers. Even if I don't believe the observer is right at all.
We can maybe fix something about being more respectful of human rights, considering more whether more political opinions are on topic or not (but
@matzesu is right, everything is political, and it's usualy wiser to be tolerant than to strictly cut dialogue, specially when dialogue keeps people together between moments when they have something constructive to do together, and this is probably going to change now with the shippings, we'll all have more relevant stuff to talk about than politics, mystics, pandemics, etc.). Being friendly is always good, but requiring every interaction to be exquisitely positive and all including because anything less is considered intended to be abusive, that would also be unfriendly to me, I prefer to be able to asume people is not extremly thin skinned and is able to treat me also as somewhat thick skinned. And I find the balance in this forum quite right and enjoyable.
But I don't think we can fix the niche part so much, so there is going to be people who might find the place just for fans, or somehow elitist, or even not friendly to the general public. It's a little like with free software user groups, there's always the possibility that newcomers find the shared values from the existing members somewhat strange. And then it depends on why. If the group happen to work like, I don't know, women don't belong there, then the group has something to fix. But if the problem is that a free software group is not terribly interested in having some free program 100% compatible to some nonfree software that happens to be very popular but is in a situation to break compatibility whatever the free software community does, then some newcomer may consider their concerns legitimate and the group unreasonable, uncaring or unfriendly, but it's maybe a wontfix issue anyway.
In any case I think even external people will find the site more friendly when more people have their Pyras, contribute software, patches, fixes, advice or experiences, and keep improving the experience. It might be always niche, but it'll look more creative and constructive.