[thx-2718]

I would posit 'was' one of the most useful sites.

Like OP said there's certainly niche subreddits.

What grew Reddit for me was the informed comments that were generally related to the discussion and often brought more light to a topic than the posted article.

With voices leaving Reddit the point or appeal of it is gone. For me at least.

[rchaud]

I've been on Reddit for over 10 years. It's a search engine for me now, I've simply aged out of most of the discussions on there. I'm fine with that, because it's still useful for search queries like "Things to do in [city_name]".