strange headache
The issue isn't really whether it's a real term or not, the reason that the team has decided that we are wanting to move away from tabloid style generalisations of that kind is because it's almost too easy, it can be lazy and it can often move the discussion away from the actual topic in question.
If somebody believes that somebody else is wrong because they're a "SJW", or any of the other terms of that kind, it's just not as effective as explaining that you disagree with them and explaining the specifics of why you disagree with them. With topics that usually raise terms like this, the topics are often pretty complex and these sorts of terms oversimplify the matter in question and also oversimplify the people those names have been applied too and once somebody has been labelled something like this, it almost gives people permission to dismiss them without consideration.
As somebody who has actually attended political discussions as part of a paid role, it's been really interesting to study how discussions progress and how sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. That doesn't mean in any way that there aren't people on here that know far more about the dynamics of discussion than I do, or that I never get it wrong.
When everything changed over on here this was one of many things that the team discussed and was one of the things that we felt it best to try try and move away from. If you look at some of the really old threads you'll notice that things often start to fall apart when these sorts of terms start being introduced.
I'm not saying that there wouldn't be people who possibly do fit into the dictionary definition of the term but it's always going to be more constructive for the discussion to deal with things that you actually agree or disagree with in terms of their opinions rather than using names of that kind. Nobody ever uses the term SJW as compliment, it is only used as an insult and nobody is ever really
just a SJW as people's opinions are far complex that that. It's always going to draw a line in the sand and when you draw a line in the sand, you're inevitably going to push some people over to the other side of that line and turn it into an "us" and "them" thread.
We want people to disagree about things, that's the whole point of having a discussion forum. If everybody had the same opinions, it would be awful, it would be pointless, there would be no value at all.
As I'm sure everybody is aware, Off-Topic was closed for a while in part because it is most volatile place on NeoGAF. We're talking about real world issues in here and are people are right to be passionate about a lot of the things that are discussed in this section even though very little of what we talk about in here is going to be solved in Off-Topic thread. It's perhaps always going to be a more volatile place than the Gaming side of things and things do tend to go off topic a lot more quickly on this side of the forum.
I'm sure that everybody hates when I write in this manner but I hope that at least explains why it's something that we discussed wanted to do what we could to move away from?