I've recently removed one (non-gaming) message board from my mental list of regulars and am looking to substitute it for an another gaming-oriented message board to visit routinely in addition to this one. However, I did have an extremely negative experience years ago over on Game FAQs and want to avoid a repeat of anything like that. Said negative experience is what led me to try this place actually and soon thereafter I just abandoned Game FAQs. Bottom line: I need some assurance of two things:

1) That the atmosphere isn't highly toxic, as in serious potential for sexual harassment, threats, that sort of thing. I have high anxiety and need to feel fundamentally safe and be treated like I'm human. AND...

2) That I won't get simply banned for holding the political opinions that I do because I do discuss policy and elections a lot too on forums, as people here have no doubt noticed.

It would also be ideal if there were some other women there besides just me. It's just intrinsically awkward being the only one I ever see here. I mean you guys are pretty cool really for the most part, but still. It would just make me feel more comfortable. I also think there's an extent to which the presence of women affects people's attitudes. Like ideally I'd like to avoid seeing lots of body/waifu-ranking threads and feeling too uncomfortable to respond when clearly "gendered" material like Gal Gun 2 gets brought up and front-paged.

I've been looking at several gaming forums over recent days to try and find a good potential match for my needs and so far the one I'm leaning toward is VGR. The community seems smallish (as in I started recognizing lots of screen names after visiting only a few threads from various sections of the board) and the atmosphere relaxed, easy to keep up with, and cozy and the forum layout is straightforward, efficient, and familiar to me and includes some unique sections like a forum called Video Game Deals that could come in handy actually. Also one of the most prolific contributors is a woman who describes herself as a "white trash" Satanist () and displays a naturalism that makes me feel like it would be safe to be the natural me there. That all pretty well sums up what I'm looking for. It just seems like a nice, calm, sane, and unpretentious place with a layout I can figure out.

That said though, I remain open to persuasion as of this hour. Are you on any other gaming forums besides this one and, if so, would you recommend it or them to someone like me?

does rule 2 rule out resetera?

The more specialized forums are usually a lot nicer (like GTPlanet, forums.flightsimulator.com, forums.frontier.co.uk) However they're probably much nicer because they strongly discourage any political discussion...

Don't go to Steam, toxic there.

So far I only know VGChartz as a place where you can discuss politics without it always derailing and getting locked sooner rather than later.

I don't really know, that's why I'm asking. Like the impression of ResetEra I've been given is that it's a super uptight, super politically correct type of place where you could plausibly get banned for not capitalizing the B in "black", for not embracing the term "cisgender", for referring to prostituted women as prostituted women and not the PC term "sex workers", for describing the Islamic State as and Islamic organization, that sort of thing. If that's the case then no, I don't wish to join only to inevitably be banned within hours or days.

That said, I have perused ResetEra's forums a bit and while I definitely sense a one-sidedly left-leaning political skew (something, incidentally, I also sense a bit on VGR, the politics section of which seems to be overwhelmingly pro-Biden), I've not yet seen any concrete evidence that like I couldn't survive comfortably there necessarily. It seems very pro-feminist and I've noticed that there's more than one female member there confirmed, which to me is a good thing. But I also see a lot of lingo that stems specifically from intersectionality theory and that does worry me about the possibility of it actually being very restrictive in terms of what exactly you can and cannot say or believe. So some good indicators (to me) and some possible bad ones as well. I don't really know what to make of it all as yet. Is anyone here a member of ResetEra or have you been?

Well, it's not the top contender on my list right now because of these concerns, but also just because the board layout is a bit confusing to me as well, honestly. I've gotten used to it to an extent now after a couple days of casual lurking, but I still have some difficulty just navigating it. I'm also just not sure how much I even want to join a super high-traffic community where things move much faster than my work schedule.

Bottom line: I haven't ruled ResetEra out yet, but I think I might like the more relaxed atmosphere I'm seeing on VGR better.

There are ban receipts viewable by non-members? Where can I find those? I'd be interested in knowing.

Wish I could help. I tried N4G a few years ago, and it was pretty bad....that's the only other place I have been a member at, aside from the long defunct 1up.com, which was actually probably worse than N4G. :) VGR looks nice, so you appear to be on a good path.

Yeah Resetera is a complete joke, you can get banned for saying you like a game from a company where one of it's employees once said something that's not politically far left.

It's a melting pot of toxic ideological extremism that I couldn't stomach or last long on even as a pretty liberal person. So yeah, avoid that hellhole like the plague. Some of the (IMO very reasonable) political comments you've made on here in the past would be enough to get you perma-banned instantly on resetera.

Gamefaqs is also trash, it's overrrun by trolls and the mods do nothing about it.

IGN is the only other gaming forum I still regularly attend; it's not as good as VGC but still decent.

Gonna throw this one into the ring.

https://forums.escapistmagazine.com/

I can't say much about it now, but 10 years ago when the site had actually lots of content the forum was really great. Lots of honest in-depth discussion and really nice people. Still seems to be somewhat active for some reason. I'd say worth a shot.

Also this, of all the ones I've frequented over the years, none are as good as this in terms of both the staff and the community.

I've decided to try VGR.