The thing is though, for every topic I know anything about, the corresponding reddit communities are OK but certainly not the most authoritative place go to ask questions or read the latest news. The most knowledgeable communities still tend to be based around traditional phbBB bulletin boards or other types of conventionally structured forums.
I use reddit a lot for asking questions because it's a really low-friction way to find a community that knows quite a bit about a certain topic. But once you really start researching a topic thoroughly, reddit's structure and voting system doesn't seem well suited for most discussions, and as a result the communities that form always seem to have a certain casual quality to me.
I think reddit offers tremendous value, but more because of the potential for easy discovery of new communities and the potential for community cross-pollination that results.
I think you are right in terms of forum-based communities having more in-depth discussions due to the way that in a forum, new replies bring threads back to the front page, whereas on reddit, after a few days, no one is posting on old threads. For this reason, I think reddit really shines for communities where there is time sensitive discussion around news and for getting a perspective on the latest happenings. So it really just depends on the topic area...
I use reddit a lot for asking questions because it's a really low-friction way to find a community that knows quite a bit about a certain topic. But once you really start researching a topic thoroughly, reddit's structure and voting system doesn't seem well suited for most discussions, and as a result the communities that form always seem to have a certain casual quality to me.
I think reddit offers tremendous value, but more because of the potential for easy discovery of new communities and the potential for community cross-pollination that results.