Prefix: This ain't a mod-hate thread disguised as "concern". I think the mods and admins genuinely have acted in this site's best interests, and put up more news-oriented content in order to pay for servers for the stuff we like, via keeping traffic up. I know most threads like this go that angle, but personally I'm more just starting a discussion and to see if there's any real solution. Mods are cool, keep doin your stuff.
I've been thinking about this lately. I'm not a very old member, but I like to lurk the old stuff and see how the community is throughout. And I've noticed a lot of trends in doing that. Particularly, there's a LOT of deactivated accounts in old threads, and old users who are just a bit bitter on how the site is now. And while some of it is typical mod frustration, internet universal there, there's quite a bit about how the community or content isn't meme/internet-oriented anymore, or the community just isn't as welcoming or appealing. And I think I figured out why.
Back in early 2011, the site expanded its categories. And for the most part, this was a huge boon to the website, allowing a much more comprehensive documentation of the internet. Big internet users, communities, internet events, sites, etc all got their own nice pages. And most of those categories are still good. But the events category slowly morphed into documenting a lot of real-world events that didn't have a particular internet character, often with the only internet part being the image gallery and the tweets mentioned in the article. It's gotten even more common with how much politics is viral in the US lately, even though they only have corresponding memes 1/4th of the time. I fully understand why that happened though, as I mentioned above, and I don't blame the higher ups for it, but here's the problem:
With news websites, the primary reason people get an account isn't to leave their own ideas in the comments, it's to tell someone else in the comments that their opinion is wrong when it seems like no one else will. It's kinda like Cunningham's Law actually. And I've noticed that knowyourmeme has a higher percentage of that kinda account growth because of these more politics-oriented events pages. Hell, I'm pretty sure that's why I joined like a year ago. There's more and more users joining the site who only come here to debate politics wherever politics is discussed. Some are so bad that they get suspended by mods early on or even banned, others are acceptable but often act as the incendiary flame for flame wars around the site. While I don't think these people are bad people overall, I probably fit into that classification after all… I can't say it's very conducive to forming a community.
If that's where users primarily come from, you'll see more and more politics content on the site in a sort of feedback loop because a lot of the content here is posted by users. There's also a lot of older users who will now end up in more and more of these political debates, and might get so frustrated by the disagreements that they end up leaving for good. And as I mentioned, most people making accounts to talk about politics made it specifically because they disagree with what others said, so it will also make arguments more present. The overall friendliness of the site will take quite a hit.
And in fact, it has worse effects than a news comment section in some ways, because the user count is low enough, and the icons distinct enough, that people remember each other for the most part. While that's good stuff for forming a friendly community, when this community is constantly debating things it can lead to people forming grudges against people they think have shitty opinions. Consciously or unconsciously, I feel that's definitely a thing here.
That sorta effect is why I think there's a lot of people who've left saying the community has changed, and why there's so many people talking about how knowyourmeme is biased this or that way when really it shouldn't matter much at all since that's not the site's focus. Hell, I'd say it's probably why there seems to be a lot less community stuff appearing, though maybe that's just because there's less people. But what are your thoughts on the matter? Maybe this is just a dumb theory and I've just been convinced on weak evidence.
TL;DR: By making more news-oriented articles to appeal to the widest audiences, knowyourmeme has also increased the amount of people who come to debate politics and also the amount of regular users who end up involved in such debates, making the community more and more like a news comment section. New comment sections aren't known for being very friendly with each other in general