No flag wars have been going on since the advent of social media. Reddit has this precise problem when it first started. Certain people with large followings immediately got front paged and others got downvotes immediately upon submission. This certainly isn’t new, but if this problem marks anything is it’s road to success. There was also slashdot and digg. I liked slashdot. Reddit had more drama and popcorn, a lot like 4chan, but now I hate that site. I still go to 4chan and slashdot. Digg, not so much.

I think if you want a good website with lots of traffic you need a few things, which include freedom of expression, lots of drama (including flame wars, memes, jerry Springfield type events, and cheap humor), good support groups that help with attracting noobs and retaining them, lots of cutting edge info so people know what’s going on in any particular field. Imho this will lead to an involved community where free speech will continue to allow people to stay. Sure you will get waves of begging and flame wars and spamming but that changes things and keeps it interesting. As long as no one gets hurt (hacking, death threat and threats of injury/death, etc) I think we all can make a lot of money.