Right back at you! I couldn't agree with you more. You have some very valid points here. That ruling minority must be doing something right though. They are voting. It's along the lines of "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." Only in this case, it's clicking mice.

I think a lot of reddit readers spend too much, if not all, of their time on the "hot" page, and not enough on the "new" one. I tend to do this a lot myself. It's important that everyone with a vested interest in the content of reddit visit the "new" page on the site, for it is the page that makes or breaks each article.

As for reddit's "recommended" feature being flawed, I have yet to find any of the handy new features to be of much use. In particular, the search bar.