I shared this opinion on ERA is this same tone, using sober and civil language, and was absolutely screamed at. Called "an evil motherfucker," (this person wasn't even warned, by the way. I thought this type of personal attack wasn't allowed?)
My opinion is that a good forum is one that regulates how a discussion takes place (motivate your point, avoid ad hominem, respect others' opinions, drop prejudices etc..), but that doesn't regulate the content of the discussion.
Resetera does the exact opposite: you can be mean, aggressive, disrespectful, whatever you want... Just as long you make clear you're fighting under the right flag. Whenever they get the slightest suspicion that you don't conform, you're flagged.
I say this as just about as much as someone can be a liberal, being a gay, bi-racial, adopted individual: ResetERA, at the very least its moderation team, is what happens when progressives become authoritarian. They're trying to create as their "perfect environment" by force, using moderation and exile as a political hammer, except, when you're so terrified and paranoid that you have to banish 75% of your population to feel "safe," then you're probably never going to feel secure regardless - you just end up more and more paranoid, increasingly lashing out and alienating and browbeating the few people who've somehow stuck by you to that point.
But it still works, in a way.
As before with Gaf, now Resetera is too big to care about false positives. The purity selection or, if you want, the possibility of finding a strong identity, are more important.
I think they are at war because they feel threatened. And everything like this thread, or reddit or whatever else, they feel mocked and attacked... what do you think is the outcome?
That this makes them stronger. Because for every push against them, they push back harder. Being under fire makes them more united, reinforces their identity in this "us vs them" that fuels their narrative. They'll feel they belong, and fighting for a good cause. For every criticism they receive, they find more purpose.
Without this they'd be just another forum, and they don't want to be that.
The problem with Resetera is this one: it's a model that actually works. That radicalization of opinions works. It fuels the war, it gives people focus. It doesn't matter if they employ the exact same patterns of their enemy, what's important is that it all works and reinforces positively their opinions and what they do.
That's why it's scary: because there's no boundary and it can be applied universally. Resetera is just another little example of a scenario that is spreading like a virus. And the problem with this is that, at the biggest possible scale, we have absolutely no defense against this.
(and let's also not forget that if things are instead maybe better here, on GAF, it is not because it was the plan. Gaf changed as a sort of knee jerk reaction to what happened. That only by chance also brought something actually positive. But it wasn't deliberate.)