But I don't work in the startup world. I don't get the stress of second guessing everything I do because in the same week opinions on all sides of an issue germane to startups have been heavily upvoted at different times. So perhaps that is key.
On HN one can fool himself think that he's getting value, but that isn't always the case.
You have manually curate the subreddits you want, unfortunately.
Presumably this isn't entirely a choice: I would expect a good subreddit to get worse if it was made default. (And I've heard that /r/atheism got better when it was made undefault, but I haven't actually looked.)
What we're seeing right now is the after effects of popularity.
I remember going to reddit and thinking, damn these comments are loads better than slashdot. I don't think I can contribute anything interesting, these people are sharp so I won't post at all.
Might have just been me but there is a marked difference in tone on the site.
I would almost suggest replacing /r/gaming with /r/games, which is a 100x more intelligent subreddit with actual discussion (due to proper moderating and disabling of thumbnails), but I would hate to see that subreddit become toxic because of front-page publicity. It really depends on how dedicated its moderators are up for the task.
4-5 years ago, you would more often see long articles or self posts where someone would make a case for something on a topic. People would read the whole thing, try and understand the issue, and talk about it.
As reddit has grown, thoughtful posts have been replaced by one liners and memes. The front page is mostly just a dumping ground for whatever is viral at the moment.
I think this, interestingly, mirrors what happened to democracy in the United States. The democracy that the founding fathers imagined was one run mostly by the educated few, with everyone else also having the ability to voice their concerns.
What its turned into now is a chaotic mess of talking points and rhetoric, with two factions on opposite sides just screaming the same things at each other.
I think its because the more people you get involved in decision making, the simpler you have to make the case for each potential choice in order for the most people to be able to understand it. People will choose an inferior choice that they can understand over a superior one that they can't.
And the problem then is that oftentimes the most important things are the things that are hardest to understand.