Perhaps it's a highly selective version of Sturgeon's Law, that 90% of anything is crap.
90% of digi B&W is crap.
90% of halide B&W was crap, so only the people who were reasonably good at it stayed with halide. As as result, maybe only 75% of current halide is crap.
On top of this, there's more and more digi B&W, and less and less halide B&W, so even if it remained at 90% crap for both, we'd be seeing more and more digi B&W crap, simply because we see more and more digi B&W.
Of course you can get good digi b&W. I've even made a few digi b&W pics myself that I've liked. But a lot depends on subject matter. I just find it easier to get good B&W from film. Why would anyone regard "I shoot digi for colour and film for B&W" as pejorative? For me (and no doubt for many others), it's a simple statement of fact.
Finally, and this is the only part of my argument that depend on pure opinion, are we talking about on-screen, or prints? On screen, I doubt it matters a damn. On paper, I've seen a lot more halide prints that I like. Yes, I've seen many excellent digi B&W prints. But I've seen many, many more halide B&W prints that I like.
Cheers,
R.
