I understand the choices you've made for Saidit, and agree with most of them.

The issue with a growing userbase is twofold, yes Saidit needs active users but not redditors that accept the current reddit paradigm - How can you know they won't try to make Saidit more like reddit and start campaigning for banning unsavoury opinions?

Also, If a person is so prone to groupthink that they won't even explore the alternative because the group narrative is that it's objectively evil... Do you really want them as users?

You have some very good points on why "you've been dragging your feet", and I think this is the core disagreement between us; I'd rather have a small group of regulars that posts interesting stuff rather than a large group of people with a higher total of regular users with interesting stuff.

It doesn't really matter, it seems Saidit is about to change it's policy regarding spammers and asses and that's what I want so I'm happy.

Yes, but ignoring things is just as useful, perhaps even more so. The upvote/downvote battles are not healthy for the community and I think increases the toxicity and the us vs them mentality.

But I'm here to get away from "them", the people that spew nonsensical hate in the comments and the people that seek out moderating positions to abuse the power. By creating Saidit you guys have quite directly stated that you/we aren't one of "them" and that "their" platforms doesn't suit you...

Assholes aren't usually dissuaded by downvotes though, that's what makes them assholes. Being ignored is almost worse than downvotes for many attention-seekers.

True, but it strips them of visibility. Again you're counting on everyone to do the proper thing to combat bullshit comments and posts but I don't believe that's going to happen. I think people will use the only tool they have to show their disgust and thus reply with comments and presto, you've got a flamewar going.

So there's my explanation for why things are the way they are on saidit. I hope you find it at least somewhat reasonable

Most of your arguments are very reasonable.

I also want to point out we've banned about 3 people for trying to basically take over saidit in various ways.

It's a start, but this is still a site where the admins gets into a "no u"-level debate with copypasta spammers to protect the site reputation. I don't want saidit to get the reputation that Voat has, a site with very hands off admins who rather have rampant unfunded radical extremists on the site than a reputation of less than absolute freedom of speech.