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.