Make no mistake. The celebration that you are seeing in response to neogaf's downfall is a direct repudiation of the forum's toxicity and vile treatment of opposing opinions. To a large degree, it is also a repudiation of the extremist leftists and their agenda who plagued the forum as well.
Yup.
I never read the Off Topic section, so I'm not sure how well the threads ran in there regarding sports, politics etc.... but the main gaming thread, most of the posts seemed ok to me.
However, the problem with the board is it became too big and everyone knows that board has clout. So all the pro-Sony tards, developer bashers, SJW crap all took over thinking nothing can do them wrong. And let's face it, there is no way anyone can claim that board safely morphed into an anti-MS forum over this gen. And no mods cared. One mod (Bish... not sure what happened to him) even worked with a Sony exec at an old company.
Some devs make an account and chime in, and even when they try to explain things, the sheer number of tards on that board will result in devs getting flak right to their faces. There's too much skepticism. No wonder so many insiders kept their communication low. On one hand, I'm sure they are itching to talk with the GAF members, but they know there's going to be some angry guys getting back at them. So they steer clear.
And no mods cared.
As much as I thought Too Human was a garbage game, Dennis Dyack got banned for bickering with the board and calling GAF a crap site. OK, pretty childish, but for all the people who argued back at him, where was the fallout for the users? None. You'd think a dev would get some respect and maybe give the guy some breathing room as he's talking with 100s of gamers, but Dyack gets the boot (pretty funny though), and GAF members continue piling it on after? Sounds dumb.
Although Cliffy B seems like a worm half the time, when he made a claim that the gaming industry hates the forum, it holds some truth. Amazing how nobody else claims anything against other forums (well, 4Chan weird shyt excluded), but even clickbait junk like Kotaku from years back doesn't even get this much flak.