I agree. I recall Reddit would just require a user id and a password to use their site. I liked that model. I guess they eventually goaded you into giving their email, but there are alternatives to password recovery than a forget my email link.
During registration you can just leave the email field blank and click "Next" to skip giving one, even though there's no indication at all that it's optional.
The site also annoys you constantly now to add an email address, but you can ignore or adblock that.
There are still some minor issues with doing it that way, but it's much, much better than storing plaintext email addresses. I don't know of any other sites doing it this way, but I wouldn't be surprised if others have thought of the same method.