Some people seem to not realize that Mainchan is a content aggregation site, and it's designed as a content aggregation site. Does this mean that all content should be articles? nope, but it means that a big portion of the content will be articles similar to other content aggregation sites like Reddit and Hacker News.
Actually, I would have preferred if the site was an image board, and some of you may have noticed that even when I share text content I use images with it, but it's what it's. One last point, not all articles are spam, actually many of them encourage discussion.
Creating content is time-consuming and with such small user base it's not worth it, so sharing articles and content from other sites is a temporary solution that almost all sites used until the user base grows.
One last thing I hope this site grows. First because it's actually a good alternative to Reddit and 4chan. Second because as a web developer I knew that it took a huge amount of time to build, so I hope Cicero could make money of it and the time he spent on building the site will not be a wasted time.
What is this place?
Mainchan is a content aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Registered members submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images, videos, and polls, which are then voted up or down by other members. Submissions are organized by subject into user-created boards called "subchannels" or "subchans" for short. Users can also earn "karma" for their posts and comments, a status that reflects their standing within the community and their contributions to Mainchan.
Source: About Page
Edited 11 months ago
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Much aggreed.
Mainchan is just another free speech Reddit clone which will not have a growing userbase unless something unique about the site's culture attracts users from Reddit and 4chan. Most posts linked to articles have no comments while most text and image posts have at least a few comments, which proves the reduction of interactivity when users are linked off-site.
I think Cicero is doing some new things in the way the site is set up to handle free speech. The tagging system for users to self moderate their feeds is a very interesting idea to de-emphasize the need for overbearing moderators and I'm very interested to see if it can hold up at scale and under stress.
Also the user content monetization plan seems like a stellar idea that I want to see in action as well.
Beyond that I think this site will become what we make of it. If we keep aggregating content we find interesting, and making sure to leave substantive comments (and upvote) where we can that creates a sort of gravity to pull in new users.
Just a matter of time and persistence.
Did you read what I said
Again, nobody is preventing you from creating content, but trying to prevent other people from sharing articles isn't the best idea
I shouldn't say this, but did you know it was actually me who commented on most of your old posts? I created a couple of posts on your antinormie sub too, so no text content doesn't gain more interactivity, This was me just trying to keep the site alive.
>Creating content is time-consuming and with such small user base it's not worth it, so sharing articles and content from other sites is a temporary solution that almost all sites used until the user base grows.
This will, at most, probably result in a few users upvoting, but text posts allow greater interactivity. Also, most articles posted here aren't even interesting.
> most articles posted here aren't even interesting
This is subjective, if you aren't into programming than you will find articles about programming boring, on the other hand if you're into bashing normies than you will be interested in articles making fun of normies.
> but text posts allow greater interactivity.
Guess what? most text posts on the site are low quality too, why? Because writing a high quality text post is time-consuming, and nobody is going to spend an hour or two writing a post for 5 or 10 people to read.
I am not denying the possibly that articles will spark discussions which will increase user activity; I am simply trying to suggest that most articles posted here cannot spark discussion because users are trying to karmafarm by refusing to post anything controversial to ensure that their posts are not downvoted by anyone. I feel that this site is quite redundant, and that, at the very least, discussions should take place in the comment sections of link posts.