[revscat]

This article only touches lightly on what I believe to be Reddit's primary weakness, namely the inability to elect moderators for various subs. If someone is able to do a Reddit-like site with a fair means for nominating and electing moderators they will have a good chance at eclipsing Reddit's success.

Reddit could also implement this themselves, and given the sometimes questionable actions of some moderators (e.g. when all Tesla-related stories were being banned from /r/technology ) this would help to legitimize the nominal democratic nature of the site.

[yummyfajitas]

Reddit is a site with an incredible amount of diversity. You simultaneously have subreddits like /r/TwoXChromosomes/ and /r/pua (they hate each other) on the same website. Electing moderators plus entryism will kill this diversity - a large subreddit can direct it's members enter a smaller conflicting one and vote for moderators who will kill it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism

Exit/competition is a better mechanism. If you don't like /r/atheism you can create /r/atheismplus.

[Goronmon]

This article only touches lightly on what I believe to be Reddit's primary weakness, namely the inability to elect moderators for various subs.

I hope you don't mean elected by the users, because I can't imagine a more miserable online community than one where moderators are chosen by user vote.

[billmalarky]

Keep in mind giving mods power incentivises mods to build, grow, and.. well... moderate their little corner of the internet on reddit's platform. You take that power away and good luck keeping mods working hard for you for free.

[revscat]

That power would still be there, it would just be checked by the possibility that they might one day lose it.

[jmckib]

I couldn't agree more, the moderator problem is huge. I spend a lot of time on reddit, but it's still not clear to me how mods and mod policies are chosen, and more often than not I see the mods doing an absolutely terrible job.

For example, it's quite common to see a post on the front page that is based on a lie (e.g., the OP claims some content as his own). Everybody in the comments knows it. Why can't a mod step in and remove this garbage?

Another example, /r/pics is full of posts that break the community guidelines. Often the top comment will point this out, but the mods are either absent or they don't care, so the sub continues to get worse.

[kiba]

If you don't like the moderators of a subreddit, you can always start a new subreddit.

[monksy]

The Mods are chosen by the existing mod team themselves. The first mod is the creator of the sub.