There is no tech secret sauce to reddit. Reddit is a good experience because of unpaid moderators who care a lot. There is a reason quality of content on reddit is higher than similar websites like quora.
Everyone says this about reddit and Twitter and yet it's still not true that twitter has been replaced in spite of the shit show going on there.
Arguably they care too much, and a bit of humbling will be good for Reddit. If the powermods had their way Aimee Challenor would still be working for the site.