Reddit is a really good system for getting incredibly-niche oriented persons to subsume a subreddit, drive a bunch of engagement, yet suck all the usable air out of the channel, and make it next to impossible for a interested-but-casual user to meaningfully participate. Just like Twitter, the people who make the service their personality get to enjoy the network effects, and everyone else might as well be spitting in the wind.
I think you know full well that I'm not advocating pEoPLE BeIng lESS iNTErESTEd in THiNGS. My idea would be to assign karma based on a logarithmic scale so that people with "just" an interest in the topic aren't immediately shoved to the bottom of the barrel by people with nothing but time to make the site their personality.
