I think it's an echo chamber mainly because the community is still small. 250,000 people really isn't that many. There are a lot of old school phpbb forums with more people than that. It seems to me that the way this site was designed was to encourage primarily the content, but as time progresses and more and more people come into the community. Those people will want good content, and they'll upvote that good content. A see a pretty hefty mix of both good content and poor content here. But that happens with every social media that first starts out. As more people come on board the good content creators will rise to the top, and those who curate them and build a following will rise right along with them. I like how this site pays the curators and the people who comment. I know the split isn't as much. But writing content takes a considerable amount of effort even for people who are really good, so I think they deserve the bigger split. But some people are great at creating good content, others are great at finding good content, others are great at building a large following of people, and still others just have a whole bunch of money and can pay their way around. Everyone has a place here, and those who stick with it for the long haul will prevail.