Its really crazy actually. Large scale communities seemed doomed to experience a period of mass exidous, or rebellion. Though the subreddit feature I think played a big part in delaying it, it would seem to be coming more likely an inevitability. I think the only saving grace for Reddit right now is there's not a very clear exit point. Voat as a Reddit clone populated by the skurge of reddit, and fleeted with technical problems doesn't seem likely to take the flag next.
>We've seen this happen time and time again : USENET, Compuserve, to some degree .. AOL .. slashdot .. kuro5hin
What exactly is the same about what happened to those forums? All I can think of is that they declined in popularity, but maybe I'm missing some history.
These realms all started off as great communities with people who were mostly in it to participate and contribute to the discussion. But over time the zeitgeist became cool, and as soon as that happens, the bean-counters arrive.
And once that happens, it is pretty much game over for the community, no matter what technology is being used to sustain it.
Fundamentally there isn't much difference between your reddits and slashdots and USENETS .. and HN's .. in the end, the community is only as valuable as it perceives itself to have value. And then when the value becomes something that is co-opted by others who desire to exploit that value, a self-awareness of that value by the collective becomes its own worst fault. Reddit is clearly being invalidated by people who don't want the value they create to be valued differently by people who have what they consider to be differing values.
So it goes. I hope the next forum where people can creatively contribute to the dialog is not centralized. But that's hard - you have to have somewhere to meet, after all ..
Usenet died because the ISPs no longer offer newsgroup access. Back in the dialup days, services like this were standard, and they made the internet truly awesome.
Once high speed (DSL, cable) took over they axed all Usenet servers. Unless you had Hampster continuously scouring for insecure and open servers, you had to pay for a SuperNews account.
Those who fail to study their Internet history are doomed to repeat it, it seems.
I've never been content with the centralized nature of Reddit as an Internet forum - for me this moment of truth has been bound to occur.