That was a problem even in the Lowtax days. People would contribute to Photoshop Phriday and other group goon activities in the hopes of getting on the front page. It wasn't a huge incentive but it was enough for people to put a bit of effort in.
But then when Lowtax started getting seriously into drugs he stopped bothering, and anything great created on the forums would stay there and not gain an audience outside the thread it was created in. I remember in about 2017 making a big effort for some art contest thingy and there was some amazing art created, but Lowtax never bothered to either feature the best of it or delegate it to someone else. By the time Bogan took over the front page in 2019 it hadn't been updated in over three years.
What made SA different to any other forum was its capacity to create amazing and/or popular things that took on a life outside the forum. Let's Play, Slenderman, All Your Base and all the incredible stories from within the threads would take over the internet and sometimes popular culture. That didn't happen on Fark or eBaumsworld. Fuck, it doesn't happen all that often on Reddit and it happened even less back then. "There's a front page?" was a meme but its effect was underestimated, because it was the interface point between goons and the wider internet, and when it died, SA just became another forum, but worse because it was owned by a drug addict and moderated by sex offenders.
