[derefr]

The interesting difference, to me, is that Reddit isn't one community (like Slashdot) but rather more of a hosting service for communities, like Discourse or Slack (or Usenet or IRC.)

At some point, I might be following a whole different set of subreddits than I am today, as old ones die/jump the shark and I discover new ones. But I don't see what would specifically push me to leave the entire site, as long as there are individual active communities there I'm interested in—any more than I would choose to categorically stop visiting blogs hosted on Wordpress.com or categorically choose to never read a post on a phpBB forum again.

Of course, I might leave the whole site anyway, but not because of a push; rather because activity on the whole might drop off in favour of something else, and all those communities I like might migrate away (like many of the chatrooms I visit have migrated from IRC to Slack), leaving a hollow shell of a site that's still, in theory, a host for many communities I enjoy—but not their canonical home, just a secondary one. At that point, there'd be no reason to visit.

[Nition]

I think it'd be really interesting to set up a more traditional forum system (like Discourse), but in a way where anyone can create a subforum and moderate it. Like Reddit but allowing for a lot more long-term discussion on a topic.