Diss Voat.co as much as you want, but so far Voat.co is actually a pretty huge success: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/voat.co
I don't think I understand your definition of "huge success".
The same thing happened to 8chan, and then it entered a gentle but consistent decline: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/8ch.net
Actually the fact that they shot up at all is a sign they did something right.
Now it is a question whether they can maintain that momentum, but they did get a real good start.
I don't see voat as being a long term viable thing though, since it's just one kid in college and the recent surge of users was largely driven by an exodus from reddit over banning politically incorrect speech.
This time I decided to be more constructive. :)
It's the community and moderators who make the site, not only the technology.
Therefore all redeeming qualities lie in the respective users of those sites, and less in the programming.
Voat is just starting and reddit is perfectly capable of performing a 'digg' and alienate its users.
Let's wait and see.