The reddit admins are taking completely the wrong approach if their goal is to increase the quality of discussion on the site.

Every time a subreddit gets added to the defaults, it goes one of two ways: The subreddit goes to total shit (r/funny, r/wtf), or the moderators are forced to combat an ever-rising tide of shit in order to maintain quality (r/science).

Neither of those scenarios seem tenable in the long term.

There needs to be a single default subreddit so that users can branch out from there on their own.