http://www.google.com/trends?q=reddit%2C+digg%2C+slashdot...
It's interesting because Digg blew itself up when they tampered with their formula... and Slashdot faded into obscurity because they didn't tamper with their formula.
There's no silver bullet.
What I have always loved about Reddit (thank you Raldi) and hate about sites like Digg, /. and Quora - is that Reddit's UI doesn't get in the way of reading massive amounts of text over long periods very quickly.
Quora is the epitome of suck when it comes to this fact - their choice of font, emphasis, color and sluggish site responsiveness when anything near 100 comments is an experience killer. And I am annoyed by their constant self-back-patting on their design decisions - when all they have done is quasi-copied facebooks horrid design choices.
Reddit has masterfully provided a display and ui/ux that makes it so much easier.
However - as you state there is no silver bullet: I cannot filter out rage comics or pictures.
I hate rage comics and I find that pics waste too much of my productivity -- My perception of Reddit thus suffers as I am finding it to be about as sophisticated as Digg - but its far worse for me with rage comics as the users are producing so many of them and in so many sub /r/ that I cant avoid them.
I get they are great comedic distractions, but for the love of all things good, please try to find a way to allow me to filter them.
If only you could require them to be submittable to /r/f7u12 then the idea of /r/ subscriptions would make sense again. Redditors should be able to submit and vote on whatever they like - but 45.8276% of all Reddit posts are rage comics!
If anything, can you please at least give me your opinion on the subject?
reddit's design is not perfect though, look f.ex. how it's improved when you install http://reddit.honestbleeps.com/ especially the readability of tree conversations
No way to filter just rage comics unfortunately without cooperation of their creators(title tags on them so you can filter).