Long, long ago, way back in the dark ages, reddit actually was a place where decent conversations occurred. I started going to the site to get "the news behind the news"; it seemed like for every article I read, there was someone on reddit who could offer an expert's analysis and flesh out the truth behind the sensationalism. Insightful posts were upvoted and reddiquette was observed. You still get hints of this in AskScience and TrueReddit (though TrueReddit is also sliding downhill...) but for the most part, reddit's current structure rewards low insight, low quality posts that appeal to the masses.

RES sped up the site's de-evolution to shitposting because with RES, people didn't even need to leave the site to consume their cat gifs and whatnot. The Great Digg Migration also brought in a huge influx of new users who didn't know (and didn't care) about the site's cultural history. Then reddit started getting power users like shittywatercolour derailing the conversation with pictures that were at best mildly interesting and at worst, noise that blocked out actual discussion. Add in some targeted campaigns of disruption from 4chan and SomethingAwful, and reddit transformed from a mostly intelligent forum for news, science and politics to the meme-belching fart of a website it currently is.

Anyway. You'd never know it by its current state, but way back when, reddit was a pretty good forum for discussion. I certainly learned a lot when I first found the site. I think hubski has some structural elements in place that will help stave off the de-evolution to shitposting (for example, no downvotes, the hide/ignore/mute option, hashtags instead of subreddits, and no power mods) but if it can happen to reddit, it can happen to hubski.