I agree with you. I think the most useful subreddits by far are heavily moderated subreddits like /r/AskHistorians or /r/Standup.
I think the subreddit idea is brilliant. If reddit is going to survive, it will need to increase transparency for mods, and decrease the emphasis on the default subreddits. The problem is not that there's too much moderation, the problem is that the default subreddits have such a wide audience because so many users never bother to subscribe to anything else. If a reddit competitor offered the democracy of subreddits without the gatekeepers of the default subreddits I would switch in a second.
If my memory serves, there were quite a few controversies that led to a bunch of people coming to reddit from Digg. There were quite a few influxes of Digg refugees. redditors complained about quality drops every time. This is before subreddits, of course.
The challenge, I think, is combining democracy with with some kind of editorial function. I think what it comes down to is what happens when you click the comments button.
I think the subreddit idea is brilliant. If reddit is going to survive, it will need to increase transparency for mods, and decrease the emphasis on the default subreddits. The problem is not that there's too much moderation, the problem is that the default subreddits have such a wide audience because so many users never bother to subscribe to anything else. If a reddit competitor offered the democracy of subreddits without the gatekeepers of the default subreddits I would switch in a second.
If my memory serves, there were quite a few controversies that led to a bunch of people coming to reddit from Digg. There were quite a few influxes of Digg refugees. redditors complained about quality drops every time. This is before subreddits, of course.
The challenge, I think, is combining democracy with with some kind of editorial function. I think what it comes down to is what happens when you click the comments button.
Edit: Hey, I just found this and felt it was appropriate. http://www.laughspin.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/nathan...