The idea that sites, or communities, should 'grow' is rather ridiculous. Growth is good, to a point, because more people generally means more content. We want this content to be of high quality and interesting, and this cannot happen when the population of a given community is too low. However, once a certain critical value has been reached, there are simply too many people, and the quality tends to nosedive rather quickly.

To this end, active advertisement of this site seems to be a rather foolish move; I came here due to natural occurrences, not a direct advertisement. Naturally, people will find themselves here due to various reasons, but mass ad campaigns to simply mop up as many people as possible will directly lead to a massive drop off in quality, on this site, once the critical value has been reached.

The goal should first and foremost, and forever move, should be, as 'Themagicalmidget' has said, the promotion of the free exchange of ideas within society and the end to the growth of echo chambers within said communities. Also, some communities or subs are explicit echo chambers, of which is acceptable, because to not allow an explicit echo chamber would be to stifle the free exchange of ideas. We should be diligent in promoting a culture greatly emphasizing the free exchange of ideas first and foremost; from that, everything else follows.