Well many here, who say SFML 2 is better, have been around when SFML 1.6 was the only version to go at, thus they have more experience and can often tell better where the up and down sides are.
I can totally confirm that. Five years ago, I started using SFML, at that time it was at version 1.2. Since then, I have followed the development quite actively, and I can say that the library has improved
vastly in that time. NPS, this is difficult to judge if you have just begun to work with the library. You don't know what advantages SFML 2 brings you before you see the limitations of 1.6.
Just to come up with another example: In SFML 1.6, it was not possible to load images that are bigger than the texture limit of your graphics card (now it can be split). Therefore, drawing a background image of 1000 pixels width might already be an issue on computers that are a few years old. Also, you had no possibility to detect when the window loses focus, to pause a game. You could not load images directly from a stream (like a file archive). There are tons of examples like this, when using SFML 1.6 you will be left completely alone. Not only because most forum users work with version 2, but also because you have no chance of a bug ever being fixed, or a feature ever being introduced -- unless you switch to SFML 2.
So no, eXpl0it3r is not exaggerating at all. And you shouldn't feel offended so fast on the internet