It is always the same: take a niche thing, whatever it is, onto a platform with a broader audience and it will not only attract more people to it but it will unevitably lure out the "I-always-have-to-make-known-my-unjustified-opinion-on-things-I-am-not-interested-in"-folk.
But I am on @wierd side of things! Let us be helpful and polite to create a nice atmosphere for newly interested players and if there are people who behave immature then it won't be us and nobody can say "the df community is toxic".
Firstly the Steam forum looks fine to me. There are a lot of clueless people who think Workshop integration is going to solve every problem, and there are people like me pointing out that this is hogwash. I'm probably the most toxic part of the Steam forum right now because I've been pretty blunt about the flaws that DF needs to address before it should be selling a version.
Let's be clear here, there isn't thorough play-testing for new versions, and an assumption on the part of Tarn that the community is going to sort out and address bug-finding after release. There have been some badly broken releases that weren't addressed for weeks or months - I'm thinking about stuff like a lack of sieges but my memory may be deceiving me. I haven't actually played for a while, though I've been on the Patreon since it opened and registered here for nearly a decade.
My point being, to get into DF currently you download it for free, watch Youtube videos, check the forum, become inculcated into the community, or you bounce off it hard and move on with your life.
Look at the current Steam listing, presumably curated by Kitbox. Looks great, doesn't it? All inviting and cuddly. It really needs a big banner across the top warning people that major new releases (which may take two years to happen) can be seemingly arbitrary in the way they change features and will probably be buggy for a few weeks after a major release. Without that kind of warning, and frankly even WITH one, you are going to be getting a lot of frustrated players wanting to refund the game.