LARGE FUCKING POST RIDDLED WITH PSEUDO-PHILOSOPHICAL FAGGOTRY INCOMING.
Sometimes, I look at /int/ and the state it's in, and it makes me so disappointed I start thinking. "They should just be banned. Just fucking ban them all. Everything would be better for everyone. Delete their posts, ban them, just get rid of everything. Just get them out of here. Who cares if its ruleshittery, nobody would miss them."
Then it hits me that I'm thinking like the people I hate. If you can justify banning animeposters, avatarfags, or plain shitposters, you can justify banning anything, really. It's this kind of thinking that resulted in me being banned from halfchan in the first place, and the reason I didn't go back there.
I wrote that large assburger post about how fun and experimentation are what we should always strive towards. I still stand by what I wrote. I have realized, however, that these concepts are too easy to corrupt. As it is easy to act as .webm related when in fact you're trying to uphold the opposite idea.
What I'm trying to say is, after all that happened, I think I have an idea of how you feel, having your finger on the button and knowing that pressing it would make everything better; but not doing it out of principle. I can respect that. I'm not sure I could do the same.
Now, about this crisis. I honestly think we're walking toward an inevitable fate. newfags are a force of nature, and fighting against them causes its own kind of damage to a community. You cited /a/ as an example of a strong community, but it doesn't mean a whole lot. 4/a/ is laid waste by newfags because quality posters got the fuck out. 8/a/ is a dead board whose only semblance of a culture is to shit on anything that doesn't fit in with their tastes; not to mention, they do rely on their mods for quality control.
Every other anime board scattered around the net is populated by disgruntled oldfags who have nothing much to talk about, just going through the motions like a bunch of drones. The fact is, anime is not a good concept to create a community around, and the least we model ourselves after anime related communities, the better off we'll be.
There is no way to beat the newfag menace without rules. To think they can be actually channeled into somewhere else is naive at best, and delusional at worst. they can't be made to leave unless we create a really hostile ambient, and that would kill the board in its own way. While you spam one of their threads, they make another three. Running in circles leads you nowhere and gets you tired. Then we just throw your hands up and say "fuck it, just ban them". And you'll comply because you won't give a shit anymore. It's precisely what happened at halfchan, and it's why we came here. It's why we'll leave one day.
We're really between a rock and a hard place on this one. Freedom will always be abused, as will rules. We've been having these debates ever since this we realized this cycle exists, and so far no definite answer has been created. I, honestly, don't think there is one. All we can do, so far, is enjoy those short moments we have before they come, destroy it all, and we leave.
And really, this is how it's meant to be. Anonymity is the principle of imageboards. Despite all the fancy shit such as "board themes" and "board culture" slapped on top of it, if there is one thing we can all agree on, is that identities fucking suck. We are all anonymous at heart, and in the end, this whole thing is a castle of sand. I don't even know your fucking names. Allow me to add to my previous thought. Newfags aren't just a force of nature, they're a regulatory element. They tell us when the game has been going on for too long, and anonymity is at risk. If you can say you'll "miss" a certain poster, then you've already invested way more than you should into the whole thing.
tl;dr: I would say that what's happening is not only inevitable, but necessary. We all knew what we signed up for when we joined the chans - anonymity. Board identities are still identities, and they will, and must, eventually, end.
Shit man, I don't know. I'm just a monkey.