All the good users got jobs.
Good communities means good users. As internet got flooded with normal idiots through the 2000s, the good users had two options: Suffer the eternal september or move on with your life. Every public community on the internet today is vulnerable to normalfag lynch mobs. These mobs will rise up against you if you are in any way politically incorrect (it's become impossible to avoid in any serious discussion these days. questioning the status quo with politically incorrect speech on most online communities will get you threats, banned, ostracization, etc) with only the slightest agitation, but they will also rise up if you are mean to low quality users (they'll complain about elitism, bullying, offensive language, meanness, people will try to troll you because they think you're a pretentious ****** etc).
So basically, if any joe shmoe on the internet can access your community, it will quickly turn to ***t. See almost all image boards and forums with public registration. The more popular the forum, the worse this will get, since at some point the owners start caring about the income stream more than the pride they take in their community, and then they act with this mentality of trying to attract as many users as possible for the banner clicks/views, which means cater to the lowest common denominator (and **** over anyone who isn't welcoming the lowest common denominator because they're concerned about board quality). The critical mass is different for everyone. Some sell out at the 10 users mark, some hold out for ages. Some admins have been remarkably commendable, but almost all fall in time to the same "let's be more newbie friendly" trap as others (either that or the sites die).
If registration is not as easy as creating a free account, it still won't make a difference if the barrier is trivial. See for example Something Awful ($10 fee for account) and demonoid (private tracker which occasionally opened registration and never banned anyone). Both started okay but quickly turned to ***t in the same way that free forums do. The reason is that from the economics stand point, it really doesn't make a huge difference that you need to pay $10 or track down a demonoid invite first. Millions of people are still able to do it, and the same race to the bottom happens as soon as the dollar sign lights up in the admin's head.
If registration is actually difficult, but not very exclusive, the decline will be slow (and your individual users better be ******* quality contributors because there's not gonna be many of them one way or another) but still happens. See what.cd and similar private trackers that take themselves seriously (by enforcing rules, severely limiting invites, requiring a test). Even if you have 100 users on a tracker like what.cd, who's to say one of those doesn't turn out to be ****** and sell an invite to some richfag who doesn't give a **** and start spreading it further to his other friends? Who's to say someone doesn't go full SJW and "break the news" in a Vice interview, leading to normalfags flooding in by the millions?
These days, an internet community needs to be locked down really tight to avoid being ****88 with by the mainstream. The community must all know each other on some personal level (maybe not real identity but personality etc) and have some mutual assurance of integrity so that nobody betrays the community to outsiders. This is still possible online, but very difficult. So difficult, that at this point meatspace communities are just easier.
So all the competent, intelligent people have used their intelligence and talents to place themselves in a cushy career, where they interact with many others like themselves. They form informal, IRL communities with such people, communities that you cannot join online. Some people failed, either out of autism or sheer bad luck - you can sometimes find them in weird online communities in the corners of the internet: Tragic cases where the person clearly belongs somewhere better, but for whatever reason ended up there instead.
I believe soon this forum will succumb too, we'll see how long we can hold before eventually degrading into a shithole.
Good communities means good users. As internet got flooded with normal idiots through the 2000s, the good users had two options: Suffer the eternal september or move on with your life. Every public community on the internet today is vulnerable to normalfag lynch mobs. These mobs will rise up against you if you are in any way politically incorrect (it's become impossible to avoid in any serious discussion these days. questioning the status quo with politically incorrect speech on most online communities will get you threats, banned, ostracization, etc) with only the slightest agitation, but they will also rise up if you are mean to low quality users (they'll complain about elitism, bullying, offensive language, meanness, people will try to troll you because they think you're a pretentious ****** etc).
So basically, if any joe shmoe on the internet can access your community, it will quickly turn to ***t. See almost all image boards and forums with public registration. The more popular the forum, the worse this will get, since at some point the owners start caring about the income stream more than the pride they take in their community, and then they act with this mentality of trying to attract as many users as possible for the banner clicks/views, which means cater to the lowest common denominator (and **** over anyone who isn't welcoming the lowest common denominator because they're concerned about board quality). The critical mass is different for everyone. Some sell out at the 10 users mark, some hold out for ages. Some admins have been remarkably commendable, but almost all fall in time to the same "let's be more newbie friendly" trap as others (either that or the sites die).
If registration is not as easy as creating a free account, it still won't make a difference if the barrier is trivial. See for example Something Awful ($10 fee for account) and demonoid (private tracker which occasionally opened registration and never banned anyone). Both started okay but quickly turned to ***t in the same way that free forums do. The reason is that from the economics stand point, it really doesn't make a huge difference that you need to pay $10 or track down a demonoid invite first. Millions of people are still able to do it, and the same race to the bottom happens as soon as the dollar sign lights up in the admin's head.
If registration is actually difficult, but not very exclusive, the decline will be slow (and your individual users better be ******* quality contributors because there's not gonna be many of them one way or another) but still happens. See what.cd and similar private trackers that take themselves seriously (by enforcing rules, severely limiting invites, requiring a test). Even if you have 100 users on a tracker like what.cd, who's to say one of those doesn't turn out to be ****** and sell an invite to some richfag who doesn't give a **** and start spreading it further to his other friends? Who's to say someone doesn't go full SJW and "break the news" in a Vice interview, leading to normalfags flooding in by the millions?
These days, an internet community needs to be locked down really tight to avoid being ****88 with by the mainstream. The community must all know each other on some personal level (maybe not real identity but personality etc) and have some mutual assurance of integrity so that nobody betrays the community to outsiders. This is still possible online, but very difficult. So difficult, that at this point meatspace communities are just easier.
So all the competent, intelligent people have used their intelligence and talents to place themselves in a cushy career, where they interact with many others like themselves. They form informal, IRL communities with such people, communities that you cannot join online. Some people failed, either out of autism or sheer bad luck - you can sometimes find them in weird online communities in the corners of the internet: Tragic cases where the person clearly belongs somewhere better, but for whatever reason ended up there instead.
I believe soon this forum will succumb too, we'll see how long we can hold before eventually degrading into a shithole.