I think a community's approach to moderation can also accelerate its degradation. Consider a site where rules are overly broad, moderators are chosen by their

I think a community's approach to moderation can also accelerate its degradation. Consider a site where rules are overly broad, moderators are chosen by their ability to assert rules blindly and are actively dissuaded from using their own judgement, and meta discussion is not allowed (i.e. about the site and its rules). Furthermore, people who disagree with each other often enough are silently (shadow) blocked from each other. We've read a lot of stories here about the importance of seeing things you disagree with and not creating an echo chamber for yourself; consider why a community would actually impose that on users. These are symptoms of a community, IMO, chasing the lowest common denominator: sanitize the site as much as possible to sell ads, because disagreement debate drive eyeballs away. A good CPM can certainly be established in a place where everything is awesome and people are never wrong. Dictatorships-with-secret-police generate ad revenue, but not any real discussion.