Well let's see. I'm coming out of the proverbial woodwork for this here.
To begin: I dislike the notion of "clearing the air". But as that's what's happening.
Sandstone posted:
Half the users in these forums are acting like fucking entitled children
Half is being generous. But is that limited to this site? I think not. What I was seeing before trailing off is a huge sense of superiority. Many would (correctly) accuse me of the same, but with the site, it tends to be communal superiority. But, not communal superiority as in the whole community. As some users have pointed out here, this site is as fractious as 4chan. So all the different subgroups were all acting awful towards one another. For being such a small site, it's actually quite impressive how bad things are.
the entries in the past four years are complete shit
Now since I wrote a few of those, I'd say that's pretty broadsided. And what needs to be said is that people need to make money, and that requires entry quotas. I don't blame the admins for using their editorial license. I think that actually naming the site "Know Your Meme" was shortsighted and it no longer reflects the scope of the site, which the admins have been saying all along. So when people bitch about "oh god not another advice animal" just suck it the fuck up.
the comments are god awful
That is common knowledge. Nobody will ever dispute that.
there’s Chevy Sonic ads everywhere
It's a website. They have ads. Once again, suck it the fuck up.
This site is essentially a bridge between 9gag and Facebook right now.
Well once again, the quotas. But that's how corporatization works. So admins have to search for stuff. Sometimes desperately. But honestly, the attitude of users and commenters doesn't help anything.
Plus it just defeats the point of memes.
Does Wikipedia defeat the purpose of everything? No. Is that an apt analogy? Also no. If KYM were run by volunteers or by an NPO, then perhaps it would be. But it's not, it's owned by a corporation, so corporations do what they always do: make money by ruining things.
Did I mention the users on this site are complete shit? Cuz they are.
You rather did, yes.
Regarding Crimson's analysis of Sandstone's commentary. He's never been a wordsmith. I know him well enough to say with confidence that in his mind, he's trying to be constructive here. He just has an odd way of going about it that doesn't necessarily jive with how everyone else thinks.
Now for me: I don't dislike people unless driven to do so. People annoy me but whatever, I get over it. My activity here has declined for a variety of reasons, but one has been the general intransigence of the userbase. But in some ways I can't blame them. Moderation has been…spotty, at best. Everyone approaches it with a different idea of how rules should be enforced. I think some mods have been excessively lenient given the rules. There's a very valid argument to be made along the lines of "who gives a fuck, it's just a place for people to have fun", which I tend to agree with. But then why have so many rules? Basically, things ended up being a nebulous bureaucracy of moderation that had little effect on the users, which I got sick of.