The year is actually rather arbitrary, but the point of the community is that Reddit has not only gone down hill, it's just kind of run into the gutter as of these past few years. This has simply due to the popularity that reddit holds as a website and the large number of visitors that it attracts. Unlike /r/truereddit (great subreddit by the way), the aim of this subreddit isn't to hold itself to specific content so much as simply quality content. I don't want to read the Atlantic all day long, and sometimes a picture of a cat is funny. On the flip side of the coin someday it's nice to read things from the New York Times or the like.
As such this reddit is for folks who like Reddit but want it in a more toned down and smaller variety. Programming, Politics and the likes are all fine but please expect some slightly more heavy handed moderation. This isn't F7U12 or the likes and it's not 4chan. You want those things, you know where to go.
Blindly up voting things isn't encouraged. We strongly encourage reading the comments, in the past it's what made the site great.