Any new and active programming community should be vocal, and node is no different. In fact, both node and rails have very loud supporters and detractors (IE, you).
I don't think loud people contribute to the health of a community. In fact, I consider it a "community-smell" - when there is too much incentive to be a "rockstar", too many people will focus on being rockstars and not enough will be focus on actually getting the job done.
Right, totally agree, in the Enterprise Java world (love Java, can't stand the enterprise connotation) things ran a muck and we ended up with J2EE. Spring isn't better only different. Too loud voices in any camp just mess things up, then they move on and we are left to sort things out.
I suspect there's a silent majority...