People keep telling me that there are decent parts of the place. Each time I try to venture in it is such a dizzying mess that I stopped trying.
It makes me feel old.
Yeah, no thanks.
I still think "Reddit for grownups" is a potentially viable business. A semi-moderated community of communities with no tolerance for low-effort garbage or trolling. As it is now, there are plenty of decent topical fora scattered around the internet, but they're mostly not great technically or culturally. I'm not sure exactly how, but there's definitely a lot of room for improvement.
It's as simple as setting up http://reddit.com/r/redditforgrownups and moderating it heavily. (Well, not really - you won't make any money from setting that up - but at the same time, why would I pay you for a reddit clone when there are already subreddits with good moderators?)