I like the ideals you're mentioning, but I don't think this forum is there yet. There are still a lot of posters who see everything through the identity politics lens. The recent Star Wars Ep 8 thread was mind blowing for me, but in hindsight not that surprising considering how polarised and crazy things have gotten recently. Even the hate towards Resetera is a symptom of this, since generally speaking this forum tends to lean one way and that one leans the other on the political spectrum. Resetera isn't a "cesspool" - they have a lot of good posters over there. But ultimately, I'm going to have to stand by my original statement - neither forum is perfect, although I do feel much more comfortable posting on NuGAF.
I see you mention this, but that's why I'm wondering if it's really representative of this forum, as I feel like it has become rather balanced and the Politics sub-forum does reflect both left and right of the spectrum political contributions. I wouldn't say identity politics is a problem in itself, but the manifestation once it goes authoritarian, as I'm very much used to writing in the perspective of minority politics.
What's the Star Wars Ep 8 thing? All I know is that it's generally disliked. I never watched it, as I disliked Ep 7 and felt it was just an ok movie and a bad sign for Star Wars. My wife did watch it and she loved Ep 7, but felt 8 was more "meh".
The hate for ResetEra is kind of more understandable, although as I've mentioned in numerous of my posts about the subject, there's a reason why a lot of people not interested in the drama went to ResetEra and it's not out of malice. I assume some people dislike the concept of ResetEra, while there's also some that feel a sense of abandonment, though I feel it's a bit unjust to take it out of people who just wanted an active forum to talk about games and interests. Most of us have said that those carrying resentment have to get over it and blame the ones that instigated and accept the errors EviLore had done as well. EviLore has been rather humble about the many mistakes he made, perhaps being even a bit forgiving to those I'd personally consider being behind a lot of what happened (seeing as I was reading everything real-time, before it blew up, and seeing the scheming). Then again, had EviLore acted differently during the turmoil, it'd definitely have been different. That said, considering what we know, it must've been an unbelievable pressure on him, seeing the earlier screenshot and then considering how EviLore has never been good at writing something short.
I definitely disagree on the "leans on x side of the political spectrum", as that's rather more easily falsifiable. First of all, there's some data in terms of the political compass thread, allowing us to see that indeed most people here are still left or centrist. The other part is of course just the fact that EviLore is a libertarian leftist. And lastly on this forum, you can be "liberal" or "conservative" and you'll find people arguing each side.
While on ResetEra. So I'd say it's very much not the case that there's a large leaning here, but rather that it's so far out at ResetEra, that it might appear as being the opposite here due to the contrast.
But yeah, I agree, and I imagine most here agree as well, that there are a lot of good posters there, but they're still under the thumb of those who exercise either formal or informal authority there. On the other parts, I guess we'll just disagree on some of it, but it's interesting to see your perspective.