[npizzolato]

That seems like a pretty silly argument. You can literally use it as an argument against any sort of change because "most people don't vote."

In fact they do vote, not with upvotes and comments but with their views. Those views indicate the place is somewhere they like spending their time, which is primarily a function of the moderators and the people posting content to the subreddit in the first place (the "vocal minority"). Since they already show they appreciate the work of those people by regularly viewing the content, it's actually more likely they agree with that minority by default than disagree.

[johnward]

Maybe they do agree? We don't really know because they are the "non-vocal majority". I'm willing to bet a large portion have no interest in reddit's internal politics or the mods struggle. They just want their cat pics. I do agree that they find value in the content or they wouldn't keep coming back and that the content comes from the minority. Reddit is really walking the edge. Things like this are why a bunch of users switched to reddit from digg in the first place. I don't think they will hesitate to do it again. They will follow the content submitters.

Most social sites seem pretty similar as far as user interaction other than click through. I got 60k page views from one top HN post, a couple hundred upvotes, and probably less than 100 comments on the thread and my blog.