The chain was set up around the model of a high-traffic discussion site like Reddit. Even if the parameters related to number and size of votes would make sense for a site like that (not really clear to me one way or the other) that's not the environment we're operating in.

Yeah, the chain is definitely not being used the way it was imagined in the whitepaper. I think that ship has sailed. Now, we just have to find the most effective ways to use the tools we have.

I'm skeptical I could find enough people here with sufficiently shared interests and a high enough level of trust to make it work

@o1eh raised this point too. It's definitely a real challenge. Heck, forgetting about common interests, just getting people who blog in a common language is a challenge right now. I get that there are translation tools, but I think most readers probably don't want to go through that hassle.

especially since there's still a big guilt-by-association streak with the way people interact on the internet nowadays

This is a good point that I hadn't thought about. Of course, it's possible for someone to set up an alt account and contribute pseudonymously, but there's no such thing as perfect anonymity, so that's a real concern in many quarters.