The problem with reddit is very simple - everybody wants to be a moderator. So already small subreddits are splkit in meaningless small fractions, which all are mostly dead due to inactivity, the users do not know where the post would be more appropriate, so they do not post. In the end we have very segregated and dead communities - outdoors, anarchism, even NSFW porn network is being segregated beyond any point. What 4chan does is they made boards where you post things in general by interests - /out/, /p/hotography, so it all is kept by the community to die, age or to continue. Have no experience with usenet, would be glad to hear something about it. Nothing much is heard nowadays. I am also impatiently waiting for unix client of this.
It'd probably work better for imageboards, realistically. Trying to recreate reddit at this point is unrealistic but you could pretty easily make a new imageboard community. I'm pretty sure /g/ would be interested in decentralized channing at least.