I don’t know who you are, or who most of these people are. But of course that’s because I’m new. Is it easy to become a part of the community and learn everyone here? I’d like to.
Im so tired right now i couldn’t even tell you who i am xD (Burning the mid night oil)
IMHO, one of the best general Java forums is http://JavaRanch.com
Their section for game programming is weak, though. For questions on Java usage, they are very good. But it is not the sort of place where you get to know people that well, except for maybe a few of the Sheriffs, or the Cattle Drive nit pickers.
I don’t know if you can count that towards the forum being alive, but there are also the lurkers that read pretty much every thread but only post something every half-eternity themselves (such as myself).
I came here for help, but am going to stay because of the community. Just like I go to Stack Overflow for questions, but it’s not like I know anyone on Stack Overflow’s names.
Also a lot of the stuff I read here, I do not understand at all. So hopefully the chat section is active.
For example, I barely understood anything in this post, and due to that, cannot participate in conversation or be helpful. As a beginner I’d like to participate, but probably won’t be able to if most of the conversation is geared towards helping others.
Edit: And being new, I end up being embarrassed getting math equations thrown at me and not remotely understanding what is happening.
I wouldn’t concern yourself with the stuff you don’t understand, I probably classify as a “professional game developer” now, and I still don’t understand anything in your first link. 
We all have different skills, I’m really good at game design as a whole because I know web design, graphics design and marketing. While I’m also a decent programmer others here sometimes blow me out of the water in terms of core programming knowledge. We all just work/talk together. Some of us are better at things than others, for example some of my Slick-related posts probably go way over the heads of some of the libGDX people here, not because it’s wildly confusing, but just because I have more experience with it.
If you don’t understand something, it’s not a big deal. You’ll learn what you can and fit in someplace.
this mutch —> ------------
Aside: StackOverflow. So I’m going to look for answers to programming problems on a site named after a programming fault? WTF??
You really can’t make a post without a spelling error, can you? :
Another aside, I was just clicking around, and… wat?
Edit: Googled and found somewhat of an explanation, but an explanation for some rankings are missing!