and Wonderwall aside, this is a legitimate, and very serious problem. The degrading overall quality of posts on the forum is an issue; in fact, a very prevalent and consistent issue that shows up, at all times, everywhere, in almost every community. As communities grow, naturally, the quality of content produced on the whole by the community decreases. This does not mean that the community does not produce quality content; and in fact, with the community growing larger, more quality content will be produced; but, inevitably, there will always be more mediocre, low-effort content than good, high-quality content.
And this isn’t really a problem, that, in the long term, can be effectively addressed. The solution to the current increase in low-quality posts, to some, may seem simple; remove the offending users and tighten up the rules. It will address the problem in the short term, sure; the quality of posts will increase, for a time; but as the community naturally grows, the users removed will simply be replaced, and the quality will begin to slide again. Resolving this issue is a stark uphill battle, and there is no way it will ever be anything else; you cannot successfully deal with the problem on a large scale, and for a long time, without neutering the spirit of a community. It is, in short, rather futile to attempt to deal with the issue in such a manner.
This post bears striking similarities to one I made a few years back, on r/unturned; some of you, such as @FlodotelitoKifo in particular, may recall exactly what the content of the post was. It was a stand against low-quality posts, such as this; however, it was done in an incredibly immature manner and had overall very little effect. It does serve a purpose now, however; it demonstrates the futility of such attempts to control the quality of a community, and the issues there are with attempting to solve the problem with one single, coordinated action or ruleset.
So what can be done, then? Surely, I could not be suggesting that any attempt to deal with this issue is futile, and that we let the increasing degrade in quality of the posts on this forum continue?
You must consider the fact that there is no real way that anyone, in any way, can regulate the content of posts. In the end, that falls to the user. You can tell the user what the content should be about, what it should and shouldn’t have, and to let it stay or remove it; but in the end, the user has the power over the content they create, and the things that they post.
However, you can regulate what they believe, and think, about the content they create. By creating “good”, and “bad” posts, you are actively fostering a counter-culture focused around low-quality content; and when you get people into an us vs. them mentality, the issue becomes nigh unresolvable. The solution is not to, in this case, create two separate groups of users, or to more restrict what is seen as “low-quality content”; that is simply counterproductive. No, the solution is something far more effective on a basic level:
Simply disregarding the posts. If someone receives no likes, no comments, no admiration, for how long do you think they are going to continue creating content? If someone sees that people creating low-quality content get barely any recognition, while people creating high-quality content have like counts in the double digits and thriving discussions in their threads, who do you think they are going to emulate? While those who create quality content on a whole cannot effectively regulate those who create low-quality content, and the content themselves, they can do a large deal to influence it.
Or: you could attempt to regulate, to deride, to disestablish those who create low-quality content, and give them a mentality that would make the entire problem far worse than it originally was. You have seen this played out many times across varying forums and communities; look at how r/unturned ended up, and tell me that this will end well. I mean not to insult those proposing these solutions; on first glance, they seem very valid and effective solutions to the issue. They are only short-term fixes however, and not workable in the long term; they will over time lead to the issue intensifying, and will have devastating results.
TL;DR: If you don’t like low quality content, don’t give it attention. Leaving it alone and ignoring it will have a far greater impact than attempting to regulate and constantly remove it.