My experience on Reddit over the past couple of years is that the users are terrible arbiters of what should be allowed. It's possibly different on a regional sub like r/Austria, but on other specific topic subs, off-topic posts routinely get huge numbers of upvotes.

Even when the rules that are made to enforce topicality are very clear, most new posts don't adhere to them. Take r/leopardsatemyface where the poster has to answer an automod comment that specifies 3 steps to determine if the content fits. There are usually a few commenters pointing out how it doesn't fit at all while vastly upvoted comment threads just discuss what was seen in the post regardless.

My point is that if it were up to the users, anything would go and there would be effectively one sub. Although there are power hungry mods I consider the thoughts of the average user in many subs to have little use or relevance to how things should work.