I actually left Reddit for this exact reason. It's obviously a success but to me the size of the community became too much to be a functioning community. Every submission had thousands of comments. The "smartass" comments are always at the top, the mindlful ones get lost in the middle, mine ends up at the end. What's the point in chiming in with meaningful discussion when there's 2,000 "chit chat" comments like "That's what your mom told me last night" followed by "That's I told your mom last night", followed by "That's what she told me to tell your mom last night", followed by another regurgitation of the previous comment in a different order.

=== Why I left Reddit ===

I remember Reddit back when it had tech news and startup advice. Back when it was like Hacker news basically. At that time Reddit's comments were of the highest quality. It was the most intelligent & sometimes hilarious discussion I had ever seen in an online community. So I fell in love with Reddit. But as it grew (especially from Digg refugees and popularity) Redditors started to "participate" on an astronomical scale. Because of the shear amount of participation, the first members to comment on a story (despite having mediocre comments) had a better chance of getting upvoted, those who waited a few hours to submit their comment got their voice lost among thousands of comments and no one would ever see it.

The problem with upvotes is this: They don't scale up very well. Whoever comments first competes with LESS comments and so has a HIGHER chance of getting their comment upvoted. Remember, just because your comment was one of the first to be seen and voted on doesn't mean it contributes the most to the conversation, the best comments come from people hours, sometimes days, after a submission gets popular. So by the time high quality comments came in, the community of Redditors had already received and upvoted the most mediocre, smart ass comments with tired memes, old jokes, & complete non seriousness. Even if they spotted your high quality comment that revealed something incredibly profound and rare, you never stood a chance at catching up to the comments at the top.

Also, as Reddit's popularity grew, the worst of humanity came out. Off-topicness, mob-rule, endless memes all became the norm. You had to flee to a subreddit and even then, the massive amount of comments (most of them one liners and chit chat) was just too much to wade through. I became frustrated at trying to have a serious conversation in a room full of jokers, I was just fed up with trying to speak in a room full of thousands of people yelling. So I just left.

My last few days I was a Redditor, I remember every submission had comments like these at the top:

Comment#1 "Smartass answer that doesn't contribute to the conversation",

Comment#2 "Smartass conversation that doesn't contribute to the answer",

Comment#3 "Contribution that doesn't converse the smartass answer"

Comment#4 "Smartass answer that doesn't converse the contribution"

Comment#5 "I see what you did there"

Comment #2,476 The most intelligently posted comment that will never get upvoted because no one can see it

I just left, and not on a good note. I miss Reddit because it helped me overcome my Christian Extremism and move towards Athiesm but it is nothing like it used to be, and for that I am angry. The Reddit I remember is dead.

Reddit is an interesting lesson for everyone with vague interest in society and human (tribal?) behavior. One of less pleasant experiences I had was on Atheism subreddit. Atheists like me like to think they're a bit special, they're more civilized, and don't exhibit the behaviors attributed to religious folks (intolerance, agression, mob mentality). Except that Atheism subreddit is eerily similar to how religious folks behave at times. My conclusion is that it's not so much atheism that makes certain folks more restrained, but isolation. Online, on a site like Reddit where atheists can group together, they're just another tribe. Only a bit (if at all) better than others.

Oh, and the top voted link at the moment was a sex tape of some woman who declared she's having sex with a stranger just to spite her husband who joined a sect which made him sell their furniture. And she was going to making him watch the video.

Atheism doesn't change human nature in any fundamental way. Reddit is not at fault here.

In fact, I see human nature as ritualistic as ever. As I see the world, most things in religion are more human-in-a-society based (a ritual for adulthood, a ritual for marriage, and some more rituals) than belief based.

We atheists/agnostics/non-religious should separate the wheat from the chaff and stop assuming something is bad just because religion does it.

You should try Metafilter and maybe Something Awful.

It's surprising to hear anyone really praise Reddit, even at the start it wasn't that great. 'Downvoting' comments that you disagree with regardless of the quality of the points made is daft.

Reddit's discussion has always been far behind Metafilter. The $5 entrance fee keeps out people who don't want to make some contribution at least. The active mods there do a great job.

I find reddit discussions for more entertaining and informative because it is common to find an expert who can verify and expand in an article or provide evidence against it.

That was actually a reason why it took me a long time to adopt Reddit. I used to stumble upon it for years, browse around for several minutes, get overwhelmed by sheer number of comments, and leave.

This happened again recently, only this time, I discovered hundreds of smaller subreddits and started participating in a few of them because they offered that smaller community atmosphere. It feels a little like a cozy lounge with glass doors at a super busy airport.