The other huge problem with reddit is that they aren't profitable, so far as I know. It would be one thing if the problem was just that their site was ugly, sl

The other huge problem with reddit is that they aren't profitable, so far as I know. It would be one thing if the problem was just that their site was ugly, slow, frequently down, stuffed full of useless "features", and needlessly difficult to use BUT they were making tons of money. If that were the case, while you might not want to exactly recreate them, you could make the argument that they were at least doing something right. As is (so far as I know) they also don't even make money despite their immense traffic. All of the value of reddit comes from the users adding, sorting, and moderating content. The people running the site actively make it worse and they aren't profiting by doing so.