Reddit comments are excellent, and I think that while having a buzzing community creates a lot more noise, there is also a lot more great content. Initiatives like $180,000 for Haiti, or the secret santa wouldn't have been the same 5 years ago.
That place has been a sewer for years and I hate that it was ruined.
That's a bit like saying Usenet is a waste of space or IRC is full of trolls. Reddit, like Usenet and IRC, is more of an enabling technology than a single community.
In each case, there are some really great communities where you can find a good signal to noise ratio. There are also some fairly pointless ones that are just rants or FUD or whatever. Fortunately, no-one makes you read every sub-reddit, any more than you are forced to read every Usenet group or follow every IRC channel. Just sign up to the ones that have discussions you find interesting and ignore the rest.
That said, there are a variety of good communities on Reddit.