I'm having a hard time remembering now. I joined Netphoria towards the end of 1998.
I know Netphoria latched onto the "Bolly" thing (that James actually started from a Gish chat) but it was otherwise mostly positive towards the band throughout the Machina era. Or at least a lot more positive than it is now. Hype here was through the roof during the Arising shows.
When the O-board launched around 2000 that attracted a lot of new suck-up fans that worshipped every official post by Billy, I don't think the people there were very critical of anything he did, which was something that contrasted a lot with Netphoria. Though I think they were more heavily moderated and didn't allow trolls or jokes (or fun I guess).
Also this forum did have a reputation of sharing leaked albums, pretty much up until we got that sticky. Not sure how he felt about Machina leaking as early as it did.
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