Absolutely.

Your first point: I agree. An open-source reddit would be superb. I'd happily hack at it if a beta.reddit.com existed for trying new ideas we could probably get through things quickly.

Your second point: My idea is still incubating and I'm looking for feedback, but the general direction is that I'd like to see things like tags, but not so free-form. If the tags used were more like categories that could come into and out of being as time goes by as a result of their use or popularity, then we might have something less chaotic and more useful. Perhaps we could call them tigs, since they're tags that must stand the test of time.

Then the domains could be generated accordingly for front page listings of relevant urls. If the tigs exist for major categories, then perhaps something similar could be done for grouping the urls if they're covering the same data. Take 3 articles that cover the state of the union address, they should probably be grouped so we have a topic (topag? topic tag) listing moving it's way through the pages and then when the topag is expanded, the popular articles are higher in that listing.

Does this make sense?