The "funny" thing is that all these problems are not new. They are all manifestation of Eternal September http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
Even the Eternal September itself was a reflection of a problem that happened earlier when USENET has grown beyond size where most people knew each other and quality of conversation went down. Alas I am not able to find the links for it, it would be really nice to find those complains.
The other funny thing is that there is a well-known way to preserve the comunity - maintain very strict set of rules and punish all deviations by a singular authority (THE Moderator) and his minions. Fidonet used to work that way and it worked very well. It only fails when The Moderator loosens the grip for even short time - the place gets overrun and can not be taken back. The problem is that any moderator will have a moment of weakness and so Fidonet got entirely overrun in the end.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
The other funny thing is that there is a well-known way to preserve the comunity - maintain very strict set of rules and punish all deviations by a singular authority (THE Moderator) and his minions. Fidonet used to work that way and it worked very well. It only fails when The Moderator loosens the grip for even short time - the place gets overrun and can not be taken back. The problem is that any moderator will have a moment of weakness and so Fidonet got entirely overrun in the end.
The more things change the more they stay the same.