I never understand anyone saying this. There is not one, singular reddit; it's a series of sub-reddits combined to make your front page. If you didn't take the time to unsubscribe from most of the default subscribed sub-reddits and subscribe to ones that better suit your taste, that's entirely your own fault.

Seriously, go to http://reddit.com/reddits/ and get rid of things like r/pics, r/gaming, and r/funny. Subscribe to a sub-reddit that has content you like. It's not like the good stuff is hidden away never to be found. Just look around a bit and you'll find a much more enjoyable experience. That's reddit's power.

This may well be, but in the old days there were no subreddits. Five years ago, I didn't have to go scrounging for the good content. So, subjectively the content available through my default settings has gotten worse.

I remember the day I learned that some of my new co-workers were really into Reddit. It was strange because I remember thinking how superficial their lunch-time conversations were compared to what I'd been used to debating online. It was an "aha" moment. Here comes everybody.

Walked to school uphill, both ways, in the snow and with bare feet too, did ya?

Reddit is, and has always been, a large organic community that has always undergone change. Reddit had to introduce subreddits as a way of breaking up and categorising communities as things outgrew the "everything on the front page" model.

Getting big changes things, and I don't see how comments like yours are insightful when all the things you listed (yes, even the deep and meaningful posts and debates) are still happening on the site, your just need to sort through the noise.

Things like subreddits help you do that and get what's relevant to your interests.

This often comes out whenever a post about Reddit hits the front page, but I beg to disagree. I think the ratio of quality/to quantity has slid in the wrong direction, but the quality is still there - you just need to know where you look.

I think the ratio of quality/to quantity has slid in the direction that popularity will always push it in.

What's interesting about reddit, is that's a way to preserve the quality. Reddit is like a hipster dog chasing its own tail. As the popularity grows the quality keeps moving to ever newer sub-reddits.

The problem there is that the quality a person is seeking becomes obfuscated, continually shifting into new, unknown subreddits in order to prevent the decay of content. Maybe there's no better way to do this (yet) but if the information a given individual viewed as quality were easily accessible it'd make the concept a lot more interesting to me as opposed to the level of misdirection subreddits seem to manifest.

While there is truth to this argument, like llambda I feel that the ever increasing search for quality subreddits leaves much to be desired. I don't like going to a site and then spending a large portion of the time avoiding a large and growing percentage of the user base. There's also the problem that most of the subreddits I like might not be able to produce a high quality version due to a high content established competitor.

Every time a site's traffic doubles, it also doubles the number of people saying it sucks.

That has no bearing on the truth of the statement.

Personally, I have few qualms with the quality of the content on reddit. I think the subreddit subscription model the site is centered around did an excellent job at helping users weed out content they weren't interested in.

And the reddit enhancement suite will let you block imgur posts.

Of course. I am not complaining (may be a little) but I am trying to look at it from a purely business point of view. Its good to hit critical mass, it will be more attractive for advertisers. Reddit will get users that might actually click on some ads unlike me :)

??? (.this) > reddit > digg

> youtube > 4chan