So like, are the boards a control group or something?
I mean think about it. It is clearly costing Riot money to run the boards. Someone is paying for these servers. Someone is paying for the domain name. And yet, despite all the money Riot continues to pour into this place, they also ignore it and don’t care about how it is run?
That seems suspect to me. Which leads me to conclude one of two possibilities. The most "likely" possibilities is that the boards are not long for this world. Riot will see the money being wasted, cut their loses, and move on to a newer better forum (or maybe just give up completely and switch to Reddit). I detailed this possibility here for anyone who wishes to be enlightened on this eminent likelihood.
But there is another possibility. One that sounds weird to be sure, but disturbingly enough has some merit: It is possibly the boards are a “control group” so to speak. While Reddit, twitter, and their own client all are designed around enforcing "rules" and (trying at least) to curb toxicity, the boards took a very different approach. Instead, Riot let’s this place become a “cesspit” so to speak. There is no attempts to curb toxicity here. Quite the contrary, the folks in "charge" are themselves toxic, as they have no riot oversight and no code of conduct they must follow. Riot just selected random members and tossed them in a position of mild "authority", and didn’t bother to see if they were doing anything good with it.
Why would they do this? Why would a billion dollar game company, that is spending money on a "forum", intentionally go with such a blatantly “bad” call? It’s quite simple: They want to preserve a piece of the community in its most “natural” state. When polling Reddit or some other place, they can use the boards as a "control group". They don’t want to interact with people here, lest they upset this "balance".
I know, I know, sounds "paranoid" right? But remember this is Riot games here. The same company that has defended Yasuo and Zoe for years. The same company that thought it was cool to have an executive grope men’s testicles and email his female employees rankings of how likely to sleep with them he is. Riot isn’t always the most "sane" or logical. But there is one thing Riot does love: Money. One look at prestige and eternals will tell you that. So why oh why do they spend so much money keeping the boards alive if they aren’t going to even make the slightest effort to make this place less toxic? Either they are going to wise up and kill this place soon, or there is some ulterior motive.