I remember thinking AltaVista was the absolute best search engine for no particular reason, and being willing to die on that hill.

(I did not, in fact, die on that hill)

This would lead to an “eternal September” effect of declining quality.

This has been the way of Internet communities since the Internet started, really. So I don’t think anyone (OP included) really believes this whole wild-frontier, brave-new-world kind of deal will last long. But having gone from MySpace to Facebook to Reddit to here, having a new platform at least gives me hope that there will always be a new one to jump to when the current one really turns to crap.