I want to preface this by saying, I do think it is likely that there are /many/ pocket isolated groups of "quality people" as you put it.
so where are they? this island only exists because the confluence of niche interests created a person who wanted to escape discord, had experience with chan culture, and had the know how to host a text board. this "denpa" has computer literacy, tech minimalism, and FOSS, as close to it's core as otaku media. Imagine a different island based around gothic lolita fashion. where would they be? would there be any drive to escape discord if they ended up there? no probably not. But they might still want public facing sites. Lowest common denominator then - neocities? I know you discount the giant shithubs, but i suspect many "quality" people who havn't found islands are posting on corpo web and getting hardly any traction: Youtube videos with <20 views, instagrams with 3 followers, medium articles with 10 reads, etc. It's hard to find these types for obvious reasons. additionally this kind of feedback conditions people who would become prolific to stop, a lot of the time.
so where are they? this island only exists because the confluence of niche interests created a person who wanted to escape discord, had experience with chan culture, and had the know how to host a text board. this "denpa" has computer literacy, tech minimalism, and FOSS, as close to it's core as otaku media. Imagine a different island based around gothic lolita fashion. where would they be? would there be any drive to escape discord if they ended up there? no probably not. But they might still want public facing sites. Lowest common denominator then - neocities?
I know you discount the giant shithubs, but i suspect many "quality" people who havn't found islands are posting on corpo web and getting hardly any traction: Youtube videos with <20 views, instagrams with 3 followers, medium articles with 10 reads, etc. It's hard to find these types for obvious reasons. additionally this kind of feedback conditions people who would become prolific to stop, a lot of the time.