As the parent intimated people don't all want your idea of quality. Reddit seems perfectly capable of quality within its structure - AskScience and AskHistorians seen like good examples. In other subs [SERIOUS] tags seem to work quite well.
>The problem for Reddit is that they're front and center, not at the fringes. //
It's primarily for entertainment the low SNR subreddits being most prominent seems to be a consequence of that.
I've seen people point to specific subreddits as quality before, but I've never found it to be true.
To verify, I just did a quick peruse through /r/AskScience. While the questions themselves are generally good and the SNR is definitely higher than Reddit overall, I hardly think it's an emblem of quality. There are plenty of drive-by comments with low substantive value and the combination of Reddits norms and algorithms don't seem to do a good job of burying those—even on the "best" subreddits.
Judging from the kind of statistics Reddit has, I seriously doubt that this is a problem for them.
The notion that there are untold millions (more than currently) waiting to get into Reddit but don't because they don't like the memes and jokes doesn't really strike me as accurate.
Where are the competing "serious" sites filling that niche?
It's rather the contrary -- the "serious" and high traffic comment threads, from the Guardian and NYT to CNN, -- get increasingly more (rather than less) Reddit like comments.
In fact killing those memes and jokes will more probably alienate Reddit's largest user base than do any good.
What is stupid memes and jokes for one, is the ability to discuss trully and freely for another.
Absolutely hilarious comment. It's the 31st most popular site in the world. You may struggle to use it but they're clearly not suffering.
Uhm, what? Low quality comments have never been a barrier for a website reaching mass adoption. In fact, mass adoption has been what has crippled the discussion in the biggest subredits. In any case, when discussing the quality of the comments, mass adoption is beside the point as far as we (average users that have no financial stake in reddit) are concerned.
You might not think it's a problem, but it's still a problem for Reddit: the conversation is generally inferior to the standards required for it to see mass adoption.
A lot of people want to create and consume low quality content. I don't dispute that. But a lot of people don't want to and the way Reddit is organized unfortunately pushes the low quality to the top.
Over the years, I have frequently tried to get into Reddit. I've found smaller subreddits and interesting communities, but even in them I'm confronted with low-effort comments too often. Structurally, the site just doesn't do enough to incentivize high quality contributions.
It's fine for there to be places for low quality content. There's plenty of them on every social network. The problem for Reddit is that they're front and center, not at the fringes.