Is that a bad thing? I personally think the greatest threat to HN is not bad comments, but too many mediocre comments. I think the best case scenario is if only the people who had a lot of knowledge or things to say about a given thread commented. It's equally easy for HN to be dragged down in a comment deluge as it is for comments to simply become worse.
Thank you. One of the implicit assumptions of user-generated content sites is that every user should be given a voice. Unfortunately, this creates feedback loops around certain topics (around here, it tends to be Linux/C/vim) because there are too many benefits attached to discussing those topics; namely, karma and [illusory?] in-group status.
One idea is to give each user only a finite number of comments they can make in a time period. As their karma increases, so does their comment allotment.
Comments
Is that a bad thing? I personally think the greatest threat to HN is not bad comments, but too many mediocre comments. I think the best case scenario is if only the people who had a lot of knowledge or things to say about a given thread commented. It's equally easy for HN to be dragged down in a comment deluge as it is for comments to simply become worse.
Thank you. One of the implicit assumptions of user-generated content sites is that every user should be given a voice. Unfortunately, this creates feedback loops around certain topics (around here, it tends to be Linux/C/vim) because there are too many benefits attached to discussing those topics; namely, karma and [illusory?] in-group status.
One idea is to give each user only a finite number of comments they can make in a time period. As their karma increases, so does their comment allotment.