Take your time.

Building a bad community, not setting precedent, training up people and solidifying a culture are pretty lethal to your stated goal.

Once you are open to all, your constant battle will always be:

1) Not let the Signal to Noise ratio degenerate 2) Be able to split the Signal down into sub categories for people to process, as opposed to a torrent which then leads to arbitrary discarding of significant data.

You bring two very important points. I agree that creating the right community and the right precedent is Key, but I don't think you need to be closed in order to achieve this. On the contrary, I think one needs to build a system that cana achieve that And be open. From our point a view, is actually an imperative: we Must be able to do it. We simply don't like close, invite only systems. The reasons probably will fit better in another thread.

With regards to managing signal to noise: 100% agree. Figuring out how to slice and dice the content so that you see what matters to You is our number one "tactical" objective. It is actually a hard problem, but one that gets easier as you come to understand the content being created and once you can benefit from enough liquidity to slice and dice at will.