That's a problem only from the designer/programmer's point of view, who amusingly enough tend to overlook human nature, or expect every participant to know the logic behind a particular design and behave just like intended. To me the reddit pattern of people upvoting comments they like (but not necessarily pertinent or valuable) and downvoting opinions they don't like (but not necessarily spammy or illegitimate) is just a true reflection of how people behave in offline life. So how a system works, apart from the inherent design, depends a great deal on the kind of users it has. So far reddit's user base ("geeky/dorky/nerdy?") matches my own interests, but the dilemma is, is reddit going to become more popular and attract many 'mainstream' kind of people, and drive out the geeks to certain subreddits, or is it going to keep basking in the unadulterated geeky glory and not expand its influence much (which is kinda bad for the business side of things)?

Also: funny people do often get away with a lot of things.