My Overall Feelings Towards Manips: I love RNG manips personally and my outlook on them has drastically changed during my time in PSR. They don't wreck the core pokemon experience for me, but I get that wrecks the experience for many others. Being able to get a consistent starter, cut out early game RNG, and make more runs finish, and many put work and time into creating. The question if this was a good thing for PSR is a subjective opinion, but I think that SOME manips without a doubt improve PSR just by existing. Those being gen 1 nido manip, gen 3 mudkip manip, and FRLG starter manip. All of these runs require a lot of information to run with random stats, which adds difficulty and resets especially for new runners. The argument that notes solve manipless barrier for entry doesn't hold water for me, since new runners having to read through walls of notes, have multiple pastebins open for ranges, and shifting decisions throughout the run adds to the barrier for entry. The strongest arguments against manips from my perspective are
1) "RNG manips change the core experience"
2) "Hitting a manip is becoming increasingly more important than overall execution." 
The 1st I personally don't feel but I understand, but the 2nd I agree with and can become increasingly worse.

Over time Manips might save such an absurd amount of time that getting a hard manip consistently might be worth more than actually learning core mechanics. Let's look at Emerald really quick, rayquaza manip saves over a minute to skipping master ball and more depending on the stats the rayquaza has (which are maniped but there are 4 maniped results.) So if someone looks at how much time they lose in their very first run to movement, which is difficult and skill intensive in gen 3, and it's less than about 1:20 they should learn rayquaza over learning better movement which is probably the most skill intensive aspect of Emerald. Hitting a 4 frame window becomes more important than over 10 movement sections in the run. This is a jarring thing, and depending on the manips consistency, difficulty, and payoff a manip could greatly reduce the player base of a game. Both this argument and the core experience argument I can't really refute and I think the more and more people who holds either of these opinions will drive the need for manipless categories.

Since I have only ran gen 1-3 I won't speak for 4-5 here. For the time being I think manipless leaderboards for gen 3 isn't really needed, and for gen 2 it fits perfectly for category extensions. Gen 1 classic is a category I have ran and I feel it belongs on the category extensions as well, but the main reason it's on the main page is to a line with the JPN ruleset. Regardless if Classic stays on the main board or moves to the extensions, I don't think "Gen 1 has it" is a good reason to add other generations. For gen 3+ if there were category extensions manipless would fit perfectly there and I hope there will be enough interest in gen 3+ to warrant a category extensions board some day.

Some common arguments I see in support of having manipless on the main boards, gen 2+, is "Manipless is better for new players" and I can't perfectly touch on gen 4+ but I disagree with gen 2 and 3. I've already touched on this, but the knowledge to learn these categories is a barrier to entry just like learning the required manip. If a new runner finds restarting for stats and having more knowledge more fruitful than learning the manips then more power to them, but these runs fit perfectly fine on the main leaderboards. They could even submit to both the main leaderboard and the manipless in category extensions.

I have never been a fan of the "If you build it they will come" argument since it is weaker than the following: "We have X people interested in Y, therefore we should work towards building Y". There are some unoffical extension leaderboards started for gen 3+ and I feel these are a great way to get this second argument moving, though the lack of exposure is hard. I would like to see a forum post of each games SRC page with a link to the unoffical leaderboards to hopefully gain some exposure, and/or pinned in each of the discord channels. 

Here are my personal arguments against main board leaderboards:
1) The current boards can host manipless runs well enough, and many of these categories can have top times without the use of manips.
2) The point of category extensions is host boards for runs with more arbitrary rulesets and manipless as it currently stands is an arbitrarily differentiation.
3) Gen 4+ (Kinda 3 but less) Argument Only: There should be solid rulesets for these categories if they are on main boards. I feel all categories should be held to the same expectations regardless of player base. If it's on the main board we should have solid rulesets and gen 4+ don't have a ruleset on the same level as the glitched or glitchless counter parts. If it's not in the ruleset it's not cheating. Even though I do think it's common sense not to time inputs for an expected result in a 'manipless category' if you can't explicitly think of a ruleset on the same level of glitchless and glitched it should belong on extension boards.
4) Having a board won't implicitly increase interest in a category, and that could lead to a stagnate leaderboard on the main page which no one really wants.
5) Gen 1 Classic has different reasons for being on the main board, and I would argue moving it to extensions, provided the JPN community agrees. Keeping all the gens in line is nice, and if gen 2 is found to belong on extensions I believe gen 1 should follow. 

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Context: The bellow will be a bunch of context about my manip experiences and such

Yellow: 
- Nido + yoloball
- Pidgey +yoloball
- Moonip

All of these I have struggled with as my first game, but going from < 20% success in runs to 88% in runs came down to me changing my mind set, and learning more about the manips.

RBA:
- Charmander Manip
- Pidgey
- Metapod
- Ditto
- No Encounter

Every manip excpet charmander was fairly easy, but charamnder to this day is the hardest manip I have ever learned and got relatively 'consistent' [NOTE: Charmander manip is basically Toto manip without start second]

Red:
- Nidoran
- Moon
- Cans

I didn't do triple extended.

Yellow NSC:
- TEH Manip

Wowee this manip is all kinds of clunky but it's amazing it works tbh.

Crystal:
- Toto Manip

I learned Toto manip but didn't ever finish a serious run, but this would be the hardest manip if I didn't learn Charamnder before which is very simular

Emerald:
- Mudkip Manip
- Abra Manip
- Wingull Manip
- Rayquaza Manip

Each of this is hitting the frame, basically (some more consistently than others but that is from manual manipping) and these are relatively easy outside of Abra movement.

FRLG:
- Squirtle Manip

This is the worst manip because it's not a true manip from the standards of gen 1-3. It is highly impacted by NPCs and is highly luck based along with a frame perfect trick. Still a MUCH better run going for manip than randomly resetting squirtles.

Botting:
I have done lite manip botting for meme categories in gen 1. I have put time into learning to bot, and found a Mankey manip and a Clefairy manip. This is using 99% of Stringflow's work, I basically did nothing but pointing methods and smartly running a robot and this was still a major investment and an overall stress experience, and my work affected only a handful of people. I can't imagine how the more experienced botters like Stringflow and Enterptr must feel. All this work, which is by NO MEANS trivial, is because they just did it. Expecting this from anyone is a large ask, and I personally appreciate everything these people have done to improve the categories. They help us push the categories further, and seeing disdain for manips would hurt for those who put the time into making them I would imagine. I get not liking manips and liking the pre-manip days, but there is always a person on the other end of the screen.

My Overall Journey with Manips:
So I have had an odd outlook on manips during my year and a half of playing Pokmemon, which might be common for those runner who have only ran Post RNG manip days. 
New Runner (Under a Month): I only did the required nidoran manip for yellow no Yoloball, and I loved manips cause it meant I had to learn less.
Novice Runner (A Few Months): I began to resent manips as I tried to learn more complicated manips such as yoloball and mount moon. I spent many hours learning, with little gains and every time I messed-up I rarely knew what I did wrong.
Avid Runner (3-6 Months): I became relatively consistent at manips in practice (~75%) but during runs and under pressure I missed manips constantly. I honestly hated every manip attempt because I either failed it or I was so stressed that even a success just made me more nervous because "I will never get a run like this again." I lost multiple runs to failing moonip, I only had about 20 runs past Surge in 3 months solely because I was bad at manips and refused to practice them more since I have realistically practiced 'enough' and my practice was 'consistent'
Burned Out Runner (7-10 Months): I stopped running from my frustration.
Comeback Runner (11-12 Months): I picked up the game again with a healthier mindset I practiced better, learned more about the manips to improve, and even did practice with a timer to practice the nerves. My practice was better across the board not just for my manips.
Experienced Runner (13-14 Months): As far as manips went I did multiple attempts and completed ever manip. I got a run paste surge every day for 2 weeks getting more runs in 2 weeks than 2-3 months.
New Games (13 Months-Present): I took my experience from manips and have learned much harder manips such as Charmander and gen 3 Abra manips and such.