Text posts with lots of good discussion take a while to consume. People passing by won't even bother to click on it and you will not be able to see the content outside of the sub's page itself.
IMO upvote/downvote buttons should only be in the entry itself and never on a front page. You have to at least click on the thing to up vote it or not.
I always thought this was a good idea. I've seen exactly one platform try it (Quora) and they dropped it for some reason. Their version was especially good because you had to read the full answer to even see the vote buttons.
Other forums implement some other form of quality control that's based on the user's reputation but I think this is better, as it can be enforced on every post, regardless of the user's reputation.
on the flip side, the wiki sections of hobbyist subreddits can be invaluable for relatively static information (ie, not topics like smartphones where recommendations go stale every few months).
As another example, I had to repair my Fisher & Paykel double-oven last year and was able to find help from an F&P technician on reddit.
So, I guess I mostly use it as a reference where the information density isn't important to me.