[simonh]

I'm still not convinced that's a reliable indicator of quality. It's potentially a measure of popularity or entertainment value, or maybe pandering to preconceptions but that's not at all the same thing.

Ask yourself, what are your from-scratch metrics for quality that you would like to select for. Then consider what are the likely or possible criteria people actually have for upvoting stuff on reddit. I'll think you'll find there is probably very little correlation between those. This is called the alignment problem and it's very hard to get right.