As a person who has been in every Steam thread since the beginning, I can say that the current state of the thread is categorically worse than what usually happens after a major sales event. However, we all have to shoulder the blame on this one a little bit as there is actually very little behavior you can call out a newer poster for that hasn't, in some way, been done by a veteran poster before.
These new posters aren't the first to post literally just a "Good morning, SteamGAF!" comment. There's just now more people doing it and, more importantly, these people haven't built up a reputation yet. Is any of the off-topic stuff being posted now any worse than the 3DS tangents we'd go on?
What I'm trying to say is: we created a certain culture in here, and we didn't get too upset about things because it was only a few posts and, "oh, hey, it's Morningbus. He's posted in here forever, so why am I going to get on his case about M&M codes?"
So, what are the problems?
1) There are a lot of new people. This shouldn't be a problem, but it becomes one because...
2) We've set a poor example of what's acceptable in the thread.
How do we fix it?
1) More on-topic, more of the time. We don't have to be robots parsing the world for scraps of news related to Steam, but we also don't need to know about your breakfast.
2) Proportion. Think about your post as part of a larger collection of posts. Is your gif really necessary to hammer home a reaction, or did the five other gif posts before you basically run the gamut of human emotion?
3) Self-moderation. It's time we start asking ourselves a hard and simple truth: who gives a shit? Why am I posting what I'm posting as I'm posting it? If you can't really come up with a reason that doesn't sound like it should belong in a chatroom, it may be time to rethink your post.
