I really admire the design of reddit. Many new users/visitors are immediately turned off by the design but that is until they "get" what reddit is. Reddit has achieved to be so many things to so many different people (through the subreddits, the comments, and the posts) because of its neutral design.

I am too following a similar approach in my side project. It's goal is to view videos and sort them into lists. The design only has a sidebar and a thumbs list. You don't even have to register to start using it, your session data is stored and you can register later if you like to keep it.