>>23
/Refuge/ appeared when several boards crashed. I don't recall them all but there were some oekaki, real life board(s) and 2D board(s).
Then the original boards when back up, but meanwhile /refuge/ was filled with stuff. Apparently, the 2chan owners didn't want to just nuke the /refuge/ board and left it in. They merely separated real life from 2D.
(This is what I deduced from observation, I may be wrong on the details.)