> the nice thing about karma for submissions is it's
> basically a whole lot of smart people saying 'well
> done for finding this, it's definitely valuable.'
That doesn't really seem to be the case any more. There's a lot of stuff coming up on the Front Page now that I, personally, think is not valuable at all. It's not spam, so I feel disinclined to flag it, but I can't downvote it either. I think there are a lot of older hands who are starting to despair that so much trivial material makes it to the Front Page, and there seems to be no way of stopping it.
There is no doubt in my mind that the community has been diluted in its intent, purpose and interest. Often the new people have insightful and interesting things to say, but the focus is largely gone as compared to what attracted people in the first place.
One can no longer assume that just because an item has a high score, it must be of value. The interesting thing is that this is true of the Classic page as well.
And I've checked my snapshots from 2 years ago, and it really does seem to have changed.
People are upvoting things not because they are valuable, but because they are entertaining.