That's really interesting.
We used to go back and forth about The Lounge all the time. There was a group of us staunchly opposed because it was a lot of work to monitor and a lot of the stuff bled over into other forums. And of course, there was a group who thought it was good to have, as well--not totally different from old discussions about allowing an OT thread in each forum.
Anyway, the Political Board was never really something that was questioned, and it was never really problematic. Like people would report stuff, but the forum was "unmoderated" so the moderator action was 99% of the time to leave it alone. Unless someone was threatening violence or encouraging some sort of illegal behavior, we never went in there. And honestly, there were very few problems. So, I'm kind of surprised that it became a problem.
Maybe in the current political climate, it became more contentious. I mean when I used to post there it was usually somewhat one-sided in terms of a dominant ideology, but maybe that changed? Who knows.
You guys would have liked the real old school OT place. Rogue's Den, or Rogue's Lair. The exact name escapes me at the moment.