>I'd propose a general rule that the more focused the board, its heights of brilliance will be lower and further between at the same time as the average level o

>I'd propose a general rule that the more focused the board, its heights of brilliance will be lower and further between at the same time as the average level of discourse increases. It seems to me that there seem to be some ideal community sizes when it comes to creating interesting, novel, and useful content. Back when 4chan was much smaller, /b/ (random) seemed to be generating new memes more frequently and with a higher average quality. But as 4chan grew, /b/ has tended to slide into more lowest common denominator content (e.g. porn and gore). I think there was something similar on /v/ (the video game board). At a certain point, the community grew too large to have a coherent collective consciousness. The solution in this case was to create an entire board of "containment threads" for the popular video games and subcultures. This freed /v/ up more to discussing what was trending in the video game world without having to deal with the pesky people playing games and talking about them. Today, some smaller boards like /mu/ and /fit/ and /k/ seem to be at just the right level of activity to support a vibrant, evolving culture complete with "localised memes" which sometimes cross-pollinate to other boards or outward to the general internet.