I'm not replying to that directly because I don't want to give the impression that it's aimed at reimesu, but I'm going to use it as a springboard:
People are not walking because they can't make personal attacks. It's the internet. The internet runs on personal attacks (and memes, and memes that are personal attacks). We can make personal attacks anywhere, MSB did not provide some rare fix that is no longer available.
People are walking because community trust was broken. It was broken in the way that snapping a twig five times and then feeding it into a woodchipper counts as 'broken'. An action was taken, there was backlash, the original actor doubled down, there was louder backlash, an ultimatum was given, a ban came down that a huge portion of the board not only thought was unfair, but wildly inappropriate, things blew up, and it came down to 'shut up or else' in somewhat more politely worded terms, to which a massive chunk of posters took the 'or else' option, either via further bans or simply leaving.
Derp was not the cause of most of this (though folks were already going to walk away over the appointment), he was the spark. Gany, you keep writing about how this is all your responsibility, and you're entirely, 100%, beyond belief correct, which is basically the only point at which you've been correct in any of this. But I'm not sure you quite understand what exactly that responsibility was. I lay it out again:
You broke the community trust. There's an unspoken understanding in any community of people, anywhere, in any medium, but particularly online, that those who hold the authority will use their authority fairly, that they will listen to complaints and concerns, and that they will take appropriate action. This does not mean bowing to every whim or allowing every fire to burn uncontrolled - and you are well aware of that - but it does mean that when a bunch of people have a problem with something you've done or not done, your response needs to measured, your response needs to come from a certain understanding of why the problem has sprung up, and it needs to adequately address the issue.
Cold rules-pounding does none of this. I think you fell back on it because you were unprepared for protest, you did not know how to respond to the size of said protest, the vehemence of it, the direct attacks and the anger, because iron-clad rules are comfortable for you, because you feel you can draw a line in the sand and everyone worthy will find where you draw the line to be acceptable, or at least satisfactory in the moment, and everyone unworthy can be kicked out without guilt, because breaking rules and crossing lines are in and of themselves proof that someone who receives a ban deserves the ban.
A lot of people disagree.
The reason why this kicked off is frankly unimportant at this point. You've made your decisions. You're now trying to patch up all the holes by trying to address every angle, cover every possibility, because the solution is, clearly, that there just weren't enough rules, that the reason people got upset at how you handled things is because you hadn't set enough boundaries. Look at this:
This is silly. This is proof of the problem. If you've got to put that many conditions on what is, for every other part of the forum, a simple one sentence description, rather than simply relying on the stickied conduct post, then you need to ask yourself why. Frankly, if you don't want a version of the Hog Pit, then I recommend locking it down for good, and leaving it visible for the sake of preservation. If you want a debates forum, then open a debates forum, but, again frankly, I'm not sure it matters at this point. It doesn't to me.
You broke the community trust, and community trust is a fragile, fraught thing not easily mended, if ever. People in this thread are afraid of the hammer coming down if they don't tiptoe enough. No amount of reassurance will fix it. No number of apologies will fix it. Nothing is going to fix it, because the people who have left, willing or otherwise, are by and large not coming back. You don't fix community trust once it's broken, you rebuild it, from the bottom up, and in this case I'm afraid that is also going to require rebuilding the community itself.
But before you can rebuild anything, you need to understand why it fell apart in the first place. I'm not convinced that's going to happen, but you don't need to convince someone also walking out the door. You just need to set the metaphorical pen down for a moment, set aside the self flagellation (real or performative), and take a good long honest look, not at the 'what', but the 'why'.
And I will tell you right now, the 'why' isn't that you didn't have enough conditions set in place to mire any attempts at protest.
