I've lurked here a long time, posted on occasion over the last year. I've grown fond of this website, but I've felt for a while now that the site has major issues. I can't tell if they've always been here, or if they're new, but nevertheless I see several core problems choking the life out of this site.
To begin, the central point of this site is the pyramid of debate, elevated discussion of ideas. A website for the "why" content, instead of the "what" content that dominates most of the internet (memes, conjecture, surface level observation, etc.). Before, this was never fully the case, but there was healthy discussion in many places. Today, though, outside of a few wonderful and determined users (e.g. /u/aureus ), this great idea is dead. Here's why I think this is.
- Prolific Users Who Do Not Conform to Central Site Culture
There are a handful of users who post the majority of posts, you can see them everyday on the front-page. They post tons of links to videos, articles, lots of quote pictures, and you see it all over your feed, regardless of subs. The posts are lazy trash that you expect to see on your aunt's facebook. Great example is u/endlesssunflowers . Constantly shits out low effort memes or links to videos, will make a single comment that doesn't respond to anybody else, usually just a weird aside to himself or an imaginary strawman, ignores all the comments discussing the garbage he puts up, then moves on to his next shitpost. And he'll do this again and again throughout the day, no elevated discussion, just shitposting.
- The Content Posted is Trash that Turns Away Users.
Again, consider the aforementioned user. Imagine you're a former Redditor who heard there's a place where you can discuss the issues without a hive mind policing dissension, where people are encouraged to avoid fallacies and actually think through things. Front-page you see this delightful post. 14-11 votes, 96 comments mostly pointing out that it's a shit quote, a one sentence claim by Einstein, and one single garbled comment from OP, our hero /u/endlesssunflowers, a smug fedora-tier attack on a strawman, not responding to any of the 95 comments, just musing to himself about "easily manipulated minds". 3 minutes later he's moved on, posting a random picture of Ireland. What happens to all these users actually putting effort into trying to engage with the post? When this happens everyday, they get demoralized, they think "why am I wasting my time trying to have elevated discussion here?". This is the new reality of saidit. The frontpage gets clogged with trash memes, conspiracy videos, and there's no way to really stop it, there's no downvote and there's always enough useful idiots to give it the 5-7 votes it needs to get seen. In a site like reddit with lots of active users, someone like endlesssunflowers would never get seen, because his content is just bad, a 90IQ socialist posting facebook memes. But here where the rest of the content is conspiracy videos and "reddit is dying lmao" updates, it has just enough contrast to, again, pickup the measly 10 or so votes you need to get views.
The People Who Stay Are Here Because There's No Quality Control
The people you would actually want to be here, the people who want to argue and comment and think about the issues are being driven away, because actual discussion is being buried by these low effort, karma farming power users who industrially produce bad content. The new saiditor is someone who wants validation without effort, who wants upvotes for content that any other site would prune or downvote. If I post a video I find, "REPTILIANS BUILT ATLANTIS I FOUND PROOF" without any comments or thoughts, a 26min video I haven't even watched of "dude trust me" tier argument, even on 4chan it would be taken down. Here that's the average post. Perhaps you would argue "users are voting it, so that's what we get". I agree, but consider this. This site has been hemorrhaging users the last few months, people are leaving. Why? Because this content is all there is now, schizoposting and bad memes. For a while people got in the comments and tried to argue, but you can't argue with someone who's already moved to the next post, or someone who's shitposting this type of content 365 24/7. I think old saidit this content wouldn't fly as much, but when average content fundamentally changes then you can expect average users to change as well.
Suggestions: Limit link posts per day, nobody needs to make 10 link posts unless they're kharma farming. If these people had 3 a day, they would pick quality links, and actually stick around in comments to defend the content and explain why they felt like sharing it with everyone else.
Implement Ruqqus's system for users claiming dead subs. We have major subs that are unmoderated, this content needs to be curated or post quality will continue to degrade. It's too much to expect you and d3rr to wade through acres of shit and sift out diamonds while simultaneously working to maintain and improve the site. We need actual mods who can work to actually implement this dream of a "pyramid of debate" centered site. To expect this to happen organically is ridiculous. These are my thoughts, I don't expect anyone to care or clap, but I would be remiss if I didn't try to type something up for a site that I do, genuinely, care about before it's too late.
