A possible idea for improving that: Maybe it might make sense to allow users above a certain reputation threshold to vote stories down? Or even just limit story voting to people above a certain threshold.

What good newspapers, periodicals, etc have in common is very good editors that set the overall tone. The crowd, on the other hand tends to go for the sensational, populist and mediocre consensus. I appreciate all your efforts to evolve HN to try and avoid that though.