Neogaf was my go-to comedy forum until the mass exodus happened. Whenever I needed a good laugh, I'd come here. For a good five or so years, this place harbored some of the nastiest and most pathetic circle of people on the internet I'd ever seen. Tattletales and professional victims always looking for something to complain about. It was even worse than tumblr or twitter. That tranny with the Minnie Mouse avatar was my favorite. Reading those posts, I was just like - "How can one person possibly be this miserable?"
I forgot I even registered an account here after the site's "reboot" and haven't visited in like a year. Just dropping in, and reading the forum now is almost surreal, but it's nice to see such a momentous turnaround. Is Tyler still in charge of this place? Dude, if you're reading this, you were the Dr. Frankenstein of wokeness lol. I can't believe you ever let it get that far.
The turnaround has been largely his doing. Yes, as site owner he was ultimately responsible for what happened prior to the split, but I think his biggest mistake was crossing the streams of prominent members and moderators and then over-delegating responsibility to unscrupulous and ideologically-driven moderators who then undermined him and stabbed him in the back. Hindsight is great, but I think few saw what was going on in the lead-up to the split. A certain amount of empathy and forgiveness is therefore deserved in my opinion. I think most of the regulars here appreciate what he has done over the past two years and have his back. Call me a suck-up, whatever, I don't care, I'll give him my opinion as I see it, including if I think he's made a mistake.
As far as I can tell from what he has said post-split, he underwent a period of intense introspection and has learned what went wrong and how to prevent it in future. He's more directly involved these days and has put a much better/more transparent moderation process in place. All bans are publicly visible in the ban log (
https://www.neogaf.com/bans/) and must include a detailed ban reason to avoid stealth bans on ideological grounds. There is also a ban review/justice project to help overturn the bans of those who were wrongly banned in the past (
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/neogaf-ban-review-justice-project.1463407/). Speech is much more free and there is no top-down enforcement of opinions. This has resulted in a competition of ideas and, naturally, winners and losers as a result. The losers still whine and try to invert the system like losers of any competition do, but the lack of direct moderator intervention (see: coddling) and a reaction score system has helped with this by establishing a natural social hierarchy as determined by the user base.
I don't know you or your history with GAF, but if you like discussing games and controversial ideas with the freedom to express your opinion (we do still have rules around console warring/real racism/etc.) then I encourage you to come back and participate more regularly.
