>You get upvotes for answering leading questions with utter conviction, (whether you are correct or not) and generating emotional responses, usually outrage (whether deserved or not).

I miss slashdot's moderation system that was more nuanced: you could classify comments into a few buckets. Unfortunately reddit is so heavily gamed by people who want karma for profit that moderation and meta-moderation would be gamed as well. Not to mention people who troll simply to troll or advance a viewpoint or political agenda. I generally stay out of the main subreddits because there's just no point in interacting with people there any more.

There is some value in niche subreddits (which I won't mention here) but once they become "too" popular it draws the wrong sort of attention and they too lose utility.

Edit: Oh yeah, if someone would like to invite me to lobste.rs, please e-mail me at my username @ yahoo.