zlacker

>>pg+(OP)
I wanted to see if there had been any visible decrease in quality. Doesn't look like it. There's surprisingly little difference between this and the regular frontpage.

>>pg+e
I'm not sure why, but my feeling is that I am personally less happy with the content a) being submitted and b) making it to the front page than I was even 6 months ago.

Maybe since I'm not a newbie on HN anymore I'm remembering through rose-tinted glasses and yelling at the kids to get off my lawn.

The things I care about are programming tips, new software, javascript/python/ruby/etc specific articles, new startup companies. There seems to be a lot less of this kind of content and more general tech news, which I can read at any number of other sites.

I don't care about business stories(other than those related to startups) and rumors Techcrunch has started about something.

On the plus side, the discussions that happen in Comments are definitely still good. I would be great if there was a way to get easier access to the comments than the ity-bity link we have now.

>>geuis+h1
Perhaps some other kind of weighing system might work.

Votes from high karma users could boost stories more than low karma users. Is there any way to downvote a story?

>>joseak+o2
Bad idea. Remember the kerfuffle around the orange names? This would be worse, because high karma would have a numeric and measurable effect on the site.

>>iron_b+r5
It seems slightly different than the orange incident. There, it was a highly visible symbol: either the poster's name was orange, or it was not, and it turned into a status symbol.

A number however is far more opaque, because it masks two different factors: the number of people voting, and the assigned weight of those people. For a given number, it is impossible (or at least difficult) to tell the relative importance of each factor.

Edit: This got me thinking: couldn't 'karma'-based voting help prevent the erosion that affects many other sites? If those dedicated members have high rank, there is a switching cost to joining another site, because they lose that elevated weight. That keeps them "in the game", whereas many other similar sites have lost the original members as average quality declined, which began a feedback loop of poorer quality.

Then, if elevated weight gives those users greater influence, the original character of the site is preserved because (1) the original users don't leave and (2) those users exert great influence on the site.

The only weakness is preventing low quality posters gaining karma weight through the voting of other low quality posters, thereby undermining the quality of high-karma users.