Do you think this is true of /r/the_donald & co? This week had them completely covering the front page (Or at least, I had ~10/25 posts left on my front page after RES blocked the rest). I find it somewhat hard to believe that they are really that popular a sub and not just gaming / mass-upvoting every post. But then again, if they were doing something obvious, I'd imagine the admins would be quick to shut them down, given the amount of shit / drama the cause on the rest of the site.Reddit functions on gamification.
By "gamification" I mean "you get points for behavior." This is true of every subreddit and every account. Reddit makes a lot more sense when you realize that a moderator's ability to influence a subreddit is the same as an individual user's ability to influence a subreddit... plus CSS and scripting. Combine that with the fact that their hires make piss-poor money and deal with a wretched internal communications culture and you soon realize that even the "admins" have little control over the process.
I haven't heard about this specifically, but it would certainly explain a lot. But I have noticed how awful the admins are at communicating with users. They have one of the most skeptical userbases around (or maybe better said is big enough to still have lots of skeptical people), yet they still act like bland corporate press releases are going to satisfy those users. Invariable people call them on their nonsense (and these get pushed to the top), so it becomes a shitshow. Honestly I don't think they know what to do with what they have better than anyone else. their hires make piss-poor money and deal with a wretched internal communications culture and you soon realize that even the "admins" have little control over the process.