I wonder if the @U2 mods' knowledge of this new place will at all influence whether or not the forum returns over there. We are talking about many dedicated posters potentially leaving for a new home, some of those to here and others to Interference.
I am curious to see what happens. It seems like they (understandably so) are a bit burnt out on the moderating experience. Things got really crazy over on @U2 around election-time last year and right after. Dozens and dozens of posts and a lot of nastiness. That's why the real world forum was removed--people couldn't play nice and so that ruined the experience for everyone else.
Then the forum was shifted from very loose moderation (last Fall there was political posts nonstop, a lot of anti-Clinton people who kept bringing up her association with U2...these were all allowed for a while) to very strict moderation. People would get banned temporarily for any political mentions whatsoever, even those that were quite vague. Which is, again, understandable since the mods wanted to clean things up and keep a nice environment for everyone.
Anyway, if I had to guess, I would think that the mods are feeling like they can't win. They get asked to clamp down on the nastiness by people who are fed up with political posts and personal attacks, so they do clamp down on it, but the rules are too vague and people fear being banned. That leads to the current predicament where I'm guessing they are re-evaluating things and whether or not they want to deal with pleasing the people who want a cleaner experience while not making people feel too restricted.
I believe we can all civilly discuss just about any topic here (politics included) as adults and people shouldn't fear getting banned. We haven't sat down and figured out the official forum rules yet, but one thing I can promise: it won't be as, ahem, nasty as Interference can get and it won't be as restrictive as @U2. We're striving for a balance so that, if @u2 returns, people have a third option between too restrictive and too loose.