Since we were hit hard recently from a top post on reddit, I feel it's once again time to bring up this question, especially for the new people to see. I've never seen a full thread dedicated to it, however, and it seems apt now that we had the highest single day traffic in the last year at least, and I personally tripled my followers without posting anything. So:
1. What do we think of an influx of users? 2. How do we expect it to affect us? 3. How do we feel about a larger community? 4. How do we feel about being linked? Should it be selective or not? 4a. There have also been chatterings in the past of invite-only. Thoughts? 5. Do we have a damage control plan in case a large number of new users don't... follow the rules, explicit or implied. Is banning going to need to come in? 6. How do we attend to keeping this a person-oriented third place? Many, many people in that thread complained about the focus on persons and relationships on our site.
I don't want to be negative, because new blood is usually good, so long as it isn't dilluted by water, which I expect many new users will be: water. There's something very unique here that I don't want to say "has to be preserved" because how esoteric and elitist that line of thinking is, but I certainly don't want redditors to think this is simply "reddit with more content and less pictures", because we're a lot more than that.