This is exactly right and I'm glad to see the topic covered by someone who's held in high esteem at HN, as it seems all the other discussions on this topic have been downmodded. Many online startups today are basing part of their growth on user-submitted work/content. Reddit is one of the few that have reached a critical mass such that the system is worth gaming, and now Reddit has to reconsider its strategy. This has happened to, oh, only about every other online community/startup that has reached a commercially-valuable mass of users, including Digg, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, Myspace, etc. etc.