From the beginning I liked Gulenko and Reinin, disliked Stratievskaya, was neutral towards Filatova, and saw Beskova and Talanov as interesting side characters. When I think of socionics, Gulenko's ideas are often the first to come to mind. They have been so much more accessible and coherent and always interesting. (And I've mixed and matched who I used and referenced over the years)

Anyway, on his website he talks about type images, and how different schools have very different ideas of types. Picture what comes to mind when you hear "Analyst" how that forms an image of a kind of person, and it's nothing like a revolutionary leader like "Robespierre." This makes it so each school is really using a different system, even if sometimes they have things in common.

It makes sense to find a school whose approach you like and can use and stick with that one. And part of why there's so much disagreement and arguing here is because this is a melting pot of schools where even MBTI gets mixed in. All of the various schools have pros and cons, and every person is fallible, but I like Gulenko's system and think it has the best chance of being actually useful. He's also doing the most as far as reaching out to the English speaking world which helps with accessibility a ton.