[overthemoon]

I still get some use and entertainment out of Reddit by staying to more niche subreddits. They draw people who are a little more willing and able to curate the social environment--willing in that it can be an extension of the hobby or interest, able in that it's small enough to be feasible for people to do it. I don't think you could say the same about the big ones, their size might actually make it impossible for human curation.

To that end, my harebrained idea is to put a hard cap on the number of members a subreddit can have, and restrict posting and voting to those members. If people want, they can create <subreddit>2 and so on, each cluster self-regulating. To prevent squatting, you can only spawn a new one once the last one reaches a critical mass, and it has to be started by a member of the old one.