[sangnoir]

> And in reality, what the majority of people see on the frontpage is the frontpage filled with the default sub-reddits.

This is a fair point. I'd argue that there is one single frontpage for reddit; each signed-in user has their own and this raises the cost of astroturfing with the same reach (%) as the universal Digg frontpage. Mods get their own fiefdoms in subreddits, but they don't wield the kind of power mr babyman had over the overall frontpage. This balkanization means disgruntled users are likely to leave subreddits, but stay on reddit itself, or if sufficiently motivated, create a competing subreddit (see the countless /r/X vs /r/true-X for any given X)