Thank you, I wasn't ever gone though, I was just active in both forums. More active at Resetera, but that has a lot to do with them having more members.
I dont agree with putting people into boxes.
On this point I agree partially. Not everyone can be put into a box on a certain issue and sometimes singular opinions are being used to group people into boxes that have a far broader meaning. On the other hand, categorisation can be helpful, to quickly get rough information accross. If you were to ask me, what are your political leanings, I'd say left-wing green. That would give you an idea of the majority of the things I stated above. It becomes problematic when categorisations are abused to vilify or paint in black and white.
It is of course something that is favoured by people being sensitive to their own group-membership. Self-identification and intersectional arguments are driving a simplistic commulative group-membership view on people. Make no mistake, this is something that is being used in politics from both sides a lot. Lefties traditionally group according to wealth / possession of production goods, righties according to religion and ethnicity (earlier also by stand). This allows to de-personalise arguments and remove individual aspects of people; to formulate general policies and observations of group-based behaviour. On the other hand, it is very dangerous to apply this to individuals excessively, because it masks the complexity of the individual human being and I'd argue it is a form of dehumanisation to treat a person just by a single label you associate with them.
One should be aware of the group dynamics and their consequences in particular for the groups one is rightfully grouped into, but a "we vs. them" mentality in direct conversation is seldom helpful. (Not never though, there is good reason, for instance, to reject a racist even on political issues you agree with him, because you risk normalising and making acceptable their racist positions by direct cooperation)
Hopefully some more of the good posters come back over but i honestly think that place will implode within the next 6 months on the trajectory its heading.
Two thoughts on that:
1. I doubt many people are coming back, because from my observation, the few people who went to Resetera and were not condemning this forum for the allegations towards Evilore have never really left. Those who do condemn this forum would rather go somewhere else than come back. Comebacks so far were from further in the past. Though DCharlie certainly is notable.
2. I doubt even more that Resetera will implode. They have a ton of members, a huge amount of people joining all the time as well and the strict moderation practices there are not very dissimilar to the strict moderation practices that were common here for many years. The only reason NeoGAF fell was that mud was dug out on the owner (which is not validating whether the allegations are true; I have no basis to say one way or the other and I frankly do not care), and I suspect the same to be true for Resetera: As long as no one starts bringing up serious allegations against Cerium that go against the views supported in the community, I do not see them crashing.
They have reached a certain critical mass that some unfair, strong-handed or petty bannings will not endanger. And as far as I can see, Cerium is keeping a much lower profile than Evilore did, which certainly is a safer way to go. In fact, I have to commend Cerium in the sense that he apparently does not use personal animosities to decide who to let on the website. Looking back at the Yooka-Laylee discussion, he was pretty mad at me, but still I was let in (never hiding who I was) and only the third ban resulted in an ejection off the board. I do not agree with the ban, especially the permanent part, and I do feel some issues are handled too heavy-handedly, but Resetera still has not reached the level of individual power abuse that was rampant around here, when the site was still pretty well off.