Well users want a web-based forum. Reddit want money and influencing power.

I mean it's all a system (now, not necessarily at it's inception) to manipulate us either to get our vote or our money and offer just enough utility to entice us in.

Would really like to see a public interest company run a major forum; even HN has an element of bias to serve YCombinators interests.

I'd like 'reddit but purely serving the interests of the users as closely as possible', as much as anything just to see what is possible.

Isn't all of that orthogonal to my point about quality though? I don't see any reason why you can't build an ad-supported service, even one that is manipulative, that's of high quality.

Like Wikipedia but a Forum?

Yeah, maybe?