The quality there has gone down. Unfortunately, the quality here has as well. (It's still very good.)
I think there are many stages of social news. The last one is: "when the general population college-aged and younger takes over and unintentionally chase away the community that originally made the site great."
Unsubscribe from the [reddit] subreddit and you filter out a lot of bullshit. The smaller, topic-specific subreddits can be filled with users with a brain.