[rhencke]

When r/place was running, things divided into factions as art was placed, and subreddits were even formed dedicated to creating or maintaining a piece of artwork. There were a _lot_ of people, myself included, who really enjoyed being able to do their little part to create something bigger, or maintain it. It was only running for a few days, and was new and interesting for a lot of folks.

Not to say there weren't bots, but keep in mind you could only place one pixel at most every 5 minutes, per user, and that new users weren't allowed to place pixels at all, to discourage people from amassing users just to draw things.