Personally, I think small potatoes are good. I was lurking this place for about a week before the big Reddit exodus. You guys definitely have a quality over quantity thing going on.
Thanks. We are definitely not interested in changing that either.
Slow growth is sustainable growth. When your influx happens over time such that it doesn't overwhelm the existing culture, the influx will assimilate to the existing culture. When the influx is large and vocal, there's more of a chance for the immigrants to destroy that very thing that attracted them. Reddit effectively became Digg when Digg imploded; once /b/ got a taste for F7U12 cartoons, F7U12 effectively became /b/. There's also the mechanical aspects of managing growth with a small volunteer team on hobby equipment. Hubski has the theoretical architecture to handle large influxes of people but practically speaking, a big influx of users can test its limits to the breaking point. Hubski's is an imperfect system that is steadily tweaked to accommodate the desires and needs of its owners and its users. Whenever your operating platform is reliant on "tweaks" you want things slow and steady.
We built this site with one objective in mind, to have a place that fosters the thoughtful exchange of ideas and information. We want to cultivate quality discussions above all else. We aren't concerned with growth for the sake of growth. Regarding the content we host, mk laid it out here and if you have any questions about it, the below post would be a good place for them.
No matter what safeguards you use, it's still very possible to have the overall focuses of post shift over time, for better or worse. Whether you use tags, filters, or subreddits as a way to build "walls," noise and other unwelcome content still spills out, whether you want it to or not. As such, it's important to try to post mindfully, both in submissions as well as comments, to encourage and foster healthy dialogues as well as quality content. A few bad apples really can spoil the bunch. Trust me, I've been on forums of one type or another for fifteen years now. It doesn't take much, or a lot of time, to turn something that was once good into utter garbage.