Reeddit - Minimalist, elastic and read-only web app client for Reddit

Ideally system would try to figure out what you like by measuring time spent reading threads, upvotes, link clicks, etc and automatically set those weights for you. This doesn't preclude giving users the options manually setting weights, which could be another useful signal.

I am under the impression the point of subreddits is to allow you to subscribe or not subscribe, so why not just not subscribe to r/atheism? That's how I use it anyway.

Are there some worthy mailing lists for discussion out there? I´ve heard this opinion before, but I´ve never seen specific lists mentioned.

Each sub is its own community. If you're having troubles like you mentioned above, you haven't found the right ones yet.

Not true. There are several smaller subreddits with excellent communities and excellent moderation. The major issue is discovery - it took me years before I (accidentally) stumbled across these subreddits.

Looking from the island of HackerNews, back to the continent of Reddit where I wasted so many years of productivity, I've seen amazing wonders in the way HN uses its down-vote systems. In essence, it's there to "nudge" the discussion back into the right direction, and overall a great tool for curating a community from those that have been decided by their peers to curate.

To me, a down-vote button puts an undue weight on the negativity of a discussion. There's three states: "I liked this", in which you up-vote, "I didn't like this", in which you ignore it, and "I didn't like this", in which you down-vote. Even reddiquette dictates that it should only be used for anything that doesn't contribute. It's very clear that's not how it's used, and in my opinion that can only be fixed by changing the official meaning of the button or restricting its use altogether. I think the latter has amazing effects on community discussion, as I've seen here on HN.

Stuff I know I didn't discuss above: The effect of a non-focused forum discussion, abuse in voting systems, impacts of large communities.

This is a good thing. Individual subreddits can and do have particular rules. For example, r/lgbt, r/transgender etc. all have rules banning homophobic or transphobic comments. In a world where trans people are killed for living as themselves (or driven to the edge of society and commit suicide), it's good to have a place where they don't have to continually verbally fight to support their human rights.

If you continue to find the interesting subreddits -- and they're out there -- and cut the crap, you'll be fine! There as subreddits of essentially the same quality as HackerNews, for example, for many other subjects.

Perhaps some subject areas are more lacking than others. On a non-subject basis, but simply for in-depth interesting reading, like reddit was back in the day, I recommend these subreddits: - r/truereddit - r/truetruereddit - r/foodforthought

There's no doubt people are trying hard to keep things from getting worse (hence creating truetrue above on top of true). But if you remain part of the community I think you'll be surprised what an amazing ecosystems of subreddits have been created.

Reddit's problem has never been spam. In fact, you alluded to it earlier in your post: it's quality.

"Censorship", aka moderation, is necessary to promote quality content. Wikipedia, /., and SO are all heavily moderated. So, too, is HN. Without moderation (censorship, in your words), content regresses to the LCD. This is bad, and worth preventing. Moderation achieves that.

Honestly there isn't anything reddit can do. Its a side effect of a popular website run by users.