AR-15.com has a wide array of posters/members.  Some swear buy the high end, uber tested gear, others shop via price point exclusively, and a lot of the population pickups something in between the two extremes.  
Speaking of extremes, we get quite a bit of that here, everything from my $$XYZ barrel delivers .25 MOA accuracy to the other end - all OYZ guns/components, etc are crap, because that's what I heard from my brother's cousins roommate from college.  
How about we come up with a range day to put some of these theories to test, objectively?  A day at the range could include total round count through the gun, reliability, and accuracy.  Performance could be weighted based on the cost of the components in the gun.  If we were really serious, the range day could start with something like a thousand rounds or so of mid level brass cased ammo, fired in a short manner - perhaps over the course of 2 hours.  Could then proceed to accuracy testing, sans gun cleaning.  Final score could be based on malfunctions during the 1000 round course, and size of final group.  
All in all, what I'm suggesting is rife with issues, but I get tired of seeing the "my rifle functions fine with wolf based on one mag" and "X brand is crap even though I don't own it, because I heard that from a neighbor."  
How about we come up with some standards, as a group in terms of how reliability is defined?  Thats the intent of all of the mil and iso standards out there - level the playing field.  But, people need to understand that a standard that specifies content, has absolutely zero impact on the function, function is specified by another standard.  A  gun could be milspec for content, but not function.  Just as any consumer product could adhere to various content standards, but fail to meet performance standards.  I have yet to see anyone discuss the difference between the two standards here - everyone seems to assume that adherring to the content standard ensures meeting the performance standard, and that the performance standard could not be met sans adherence to the content standard.  Granted, the military requires content standard adherence, but no supplier in the commercial sector would agree to that, if an alternative could deliver the customer's specified results.  

You can see it in real life.  Sign up for a carbine operator's course near you.  All forms of ARs will show up.  Many will fail.  Many brands/models fail on a relatively regular basis.  Frankenguns seem to fail as often.