I think voting is the problem. The gamification attracts a certain type of person who for various reasons is willing to spend absurd amounts of time / effort to "acquire more points". This in turn warps the community as a result.

I understand it was an attempt to police spam. However I still think that slashdot perhaps struck the right balance (the old slashdot I mean, I don't know how they do it now). Randomly a small percentage of users get mod ability when they read the threads which enables them to vote / classify / tag spam.