From the reader and the site's point of view, such as a statement is nonsensical. For the reader, the more content the better, as there is a greatly increased chance of finding a story that scratches a particular itch.
From the site's point of view, more content means greater choice, which means more hooks to catch passing eyeball traffic and increased chances of those eyeballs returning. And with repeated returns, a greater chance that a subscription will be taken out, and revenue pays the bills.
Content is king. Or queen, depending on your viewpoint. It's a win/win situation.
Unless you are a writer.
The downside is a faster front page/list turnover and, inevitably, less exposure. How that affects writers depends on the nature of the writer. For some it's a not an issue, as they write for themselves, for fun and if other people read (and like) their work, that's a nice bonus. For some it's a pension top up, holiday fund, a means to buy things they otherwise wouldn't, and for some, it's an integral part of their income strategy.
Writers do so for a multitude of reasons, but is there a point when a balance is tipped?
There have been many discussions on the forums about AI and AI content. There is no point in being King Canute about it. It's here, it's going to stay, and it's going to be more prominent. It can be used well, and it can be used badly. Some who use it badly are going to become better and eventually, will become popular as they adjust their content to the market conditions.
Inevitably, there is going to be so much content, that the submission process will be swamped as hundreds (eventually thousands) of story submissions are submitted each day. Triggered by the ability of one person to simply submit a story synopsis to an AI and have result a few seconds later.
I wouldn't be surprised if, in a few years, internet sites spring up, where all you have to do is submit a few plot prompts into a box and AI will create tailored stories targeting specific kinks, completely cutting out the middle person, the writer.
What effect would such a site have on curated sites like this one? Would traffic increase alongside the content, or would readers drift away because 'Story maker. com' (currently fictional, heavy emphasis on the 'currently') and similar, allows readers far greater specialisation and the ability to instantly create stories that they really want to read, just by inputting : Custard, 1970's phone box, banana's, Pokemon, incest, gravel chips : into a text submission box. A few seconds work for instant gratification. No need to spend hours trawling through internet sites in the vague hope of finding something that only barely scratches, at best, the desire of the reader.
The answer to that, is one that we will probably not have long to wait for.
Another linked observation that I have noticed changing recently, is the willingness of readers to score stories, or to be more pertinent, the lack of willingness. A few years ago, you only had to wait a few hours, or so, for a score to be visible. I am of the understanding that scores are important to the lower access denizens, because they have a limited amount of stories they can access per day.
Because of this, lower and unscored stories are avoided because the risk of opening a terrible story is exponentially increased. If you only have the ability to access a few stories per day, you are going to spend that access on the best scoring stories you can find. Once you have read those stories, and if you have allowance left, then you are more likely to 'take a chance' on an unscored story. This is going to become progressively harder as the daily story submissions increase in volume (Thanks to AI).
The more stories that are available, the more precious that allotment becomes. Some of this can be mitigated by looking at an author's page and looking at the scores shown, to gain an insight of the potential quality of the work held. If there are scores to see.
A few years ago, almost all stories had a score by the third page (or within a few days). I'm currently looking at page 16, which is almost a month back. Although I can't remember what the cut off point for basic access is (page wise), almost all of the displayed stories would have had a score by now. Out of the twenty stories shown, just eleven are scored. Looking through pages sixteen, and seventeen (being the last page for the month) it's almost an even split between scored and unscored and out of the scored stories, there is a slight bias to story's having low scores.
Which makes sense when taking human nature into consideration, as we are more likely to complain about something than praise it.
As much as Laz hates the topic, scores are important to a reader (who are, ultimately, the people who pay the bills), and for the average individual, used as a means to organise a reading hierarchy. The best scoring ones go to the top, with a descending scale utilised depending on how much reading is being done (or to be done). At some point, the stories are going to become so unpleasant to read in your list, that you end up doing something else instead. Like filing your tax return. At least until something better is published that you can then read, instead of doing things you should really be doing.
With more content being submitted, this lack of scoring is going to become worse, and the inevitable accessing of stories on the site is going to become a digital reading form of Russian Roulette.
I am well aware that many will only score a story when it's finished, and I understand and have no issue with that. However, I do wonder if a new mechanic should be implemented on the site. One that requires a story to be scored before the next story is accessed? Maybe make it an additional requirement of the 'free' tier? Take out a subscription and you won't have to score a story before moving on to the next, or take out a subscription and avoid having to score at all. I'm not sure how technically feasible that is from a back end point of view. Previously submitted scores can already be changed, if you decide that a story has improved/declined in its telling (subsequent chapters), so not much needs changing there.
Choice is good, and I believe having visible scores helps that choice and helps readers choose stories they will enjoy, which in turn, indirectly helps the site. Happy customers are return customers.