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Notes -
It’s not.
The quality of discussion is higher than anywhere on reddit, and unlike reddit, the admins have no interest in censoring certain political viewpoints; leftists and rightists alike are welcome.
Let's be honest here - nobody is censored here, but it turns out, people don't like arguing 20-on-1 anywhere in society, regardless of ideology. Which is true of left-leaning spaces as well, for conservatives. But, well, those spaces don't do the whole "we're not censoring viewpoints" thing, they just say forthrightly, 'yeah, this is a place for people who agree on x, y, and z. Like it or leave.'
Are you claiming that any space that claims to operate on a neutral principle of free speech is fundamentally duplicitous because it's just going to end up coalescing around a consensus viewpoint anyway?
I don't think it's always duplicitous, but I think anybody who seriously thinks the reason why this place is more right-leaning is some belief that in a free and open debate with nobody limiting it, the right-leaning argument wins is kind of lying to themselves, when in reality, the way the right wins these supposedly open spaces is saying enough things that trigger basically the fight or flight part of people's minds.
I'm a nearing middle-aged white guy, so the silly to frankly, terrible things said in this forum brush off my back, but a lot of the current left are basically and I say this in descriptive way, The Other - single women, minorities, immigrants, non-straight people, etc. So yeah, I can see why many people if in a community where what they think is open racism/sexism/bigotry against them is accepted, they say bye, and leave that community. Some people will hang around and still fight, but the reality is, most black people in 1960's America didn't have to argue about whether they deserved to use the same bathrooms as white people, and likely would've left any group arguing that. Obviously, not zero, but most people aren't argumentative weirdos like we are.
So yeah, the general tilt of any community will eventually become more of that, one way or the other. Also, in many cases (this isn't true here), there's a silent majority that's not as extreme, but also are effected by the community. YT comments section are kind of a perfect example - in a lot of cases, they're utterly rancid, no matter the topic, even when a creator doesn't want that. Because somebody whose basic belief about a YT video is, "that was all right," isn't going to post.
You aren't wrong that it's understandable why The Other, as you put it, mostly wouldn't want to participate here. But what solution do you propose? I think it's appropriate for boardgaming and RPG forums to have rules saying "no Holocaust deniers" or "You cannot say black people have low IQs," because even if there is some intelligent debate to be had there, it's so contentious and inflammatory that it would eclipse what everyone is ostensibly there for. The failure mode in those places is that the consensus opinion settles on not only "No Holocaust denial" but also "No opinions at all that would upset a leftist social justice activist."
And it's not that leftists are particularly censorious compared to rightists. It's just that almost all the hobby and public discourse spaces are dominated by leftists. Righties who are so fond of pointing out that leftists ban all wrongthink are kidding themselves if they think their side ever was, or would be, more tolerant of "free speech" by the other side. (Some are even open about this, and merely bemoan the fact that they happen to be - currently - on the losing side.)
So here, we allow all the disreputable and shady and inflammatory opinions that are too toxic for other places, and the inevitable side effect of that is that people who find those views too toxic are not going to stick around and engage with them.
Either you have actual free speech (which means putting up with ideologues full of hate for their outgroup, who will drive everyone in their outgroup off) or you don't, in which case you have a forum that basically allows only one point of view and will polarize against any form of ideological diversity.
Once you've reached "no Holocaust deniers" you've already set your feet on the slippery slope known as "viewpoint discrimination". The last conceivable step is "no politics except directly related to <hobby>", and that (and the previous one of "no politics at all") both depend on moderators not willing to agree with or fall for the whole "Your views are politics and mine are just common decency" thing.
Here's the thing about slippery slopes: they exist, but every rule is a "slippery slope" of some kind. Maybe you think a hobby forum shouldn't draw the line at Holocaust denial. Fine, let the Holocaust deniers have free reign (and drive off almost everyone else). How about white supremacists talking about how we should send all the niggers back to Africa? Would that be okay? If not, then whoops, there you are practicing "viewpoint discrimination" again.
Even here, we don't allow people to actually call other people niggers. And we've gotten complaints about that.
Yes, that's on the slippery slope too. We know this because we've seen it. This always reaches at least as far as "your viewpoint implies something which could be harmful to me and mine, thus amounts to an attack on me, and therefore should be banned" covering a wide variety of ordinary right-wing viewpoints.
Yes, it is on the slippery slope. My point is that you can't decide you will never put any restrictions in place that are on a "slippery slope" or you cannot have restrictions at all. Do you want a place with zero restrictions? We've talked about this many times before. We know what those places look like.
Everything else is just negotiating where the line will be.
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