I think reddit has done a good job at it. Many of the focused, smaller subreddits are great arenas to discuss and grow in particular fields. /r/fitness and /r/keto are crucial to my improving physical fitness. And unlike dedicated forums, I can use a single username for participating in various topics I am interested in; like programming, math, cooking, dating, [local city], etc.
For every subreddit, once that community has reached about 150k users it starts to succumb to the "Reddit" effect - effectively becoming dowsed in memes, puns, gif reactions, etc.
I think it has to do with the fact that people are pandering for self affirmation through upvotes, which can lead to a decreased signal:noise ratio. Reddit recently made vote scores hidden for the first 24 hours, probably in an effort to stop some of this pandering.
But the interesting part is, once a subreddit grows too large, a splinter group will emerge and form another subreddit.
(And I think hiding the scores is a per-subreddit moderator option. They are adding more and more of those to let moderators customize their communities.)
Yeah that's online, that has been solved, I should have mentioned offline. Connecting like-minded people offline is the problem nobody has achieved to solve yet.
Were you thinking something along the lines of helping people find events they're interested in? Sounds like a space that many startups have come and gone through, but one that they have yet to find success in.
