zlacker

That doesn't mean the communities aren't functional. The lurkers are still voting on the commenters. There's various internet communities who've tried different ways to keep that judgement mechanic high quality, and with varying degrees of success. HN is maybe one of the best.

The ability to create and to judge might well be separate. How many food critics are good chefs, and vice versa? Perhaps it's due to not having a horse in the race.

What's fascinating is that we have these people who contribute huge amount of content, like the review guy that's mentioned.

Some of these guys are even interactive. I've had programming questions answered by Jon Skeet, and it just boggles the mind how he can be so productive.

There's probably some specific life circumstances that have to come together for us to benefit from a guy like that.

>>lordna+(OP)
I disagree about HN being among the best for managing judgment. Down-voting requires X amount of karma but up-voting doesn't.

>>Dowwie+Te
I think that’s a key element to the success. It introduces an obvious upward bias in karma, but I don’t see that as a problem.

For one, it prevents creating new accounts to downvote someone that pisses you off. For me personally, it means I downvote only for “adds absolutely nothing and is somehow harmful to HN community”. I probably upvote : downvote at 20:1 or greater.

When deciding if a comment voting system is good or bad, I look heavily towards the outcome, and secondarily towards the mechanism. I think outcome on HN is second to none.

>>sokolo+Dg
Fine. HN is the best among the contenders, but that's not something that one ought to hang one's hat on. Posts don't rise on their own merits here. If that is a goal, there is much room for improvement. There are a number of situational factors that influence whether any post will receive attention. These include, but are not limited to timing, competition, the new post reader archetype and his/her motivations to participate, etc.

>>Dowwie+hm
I don't think that limiting downvotes to accounts with X karma is a significant contributor to the problem of getting attention to a new high-quality post on a fairly high-volume site.

>>sokolo+fn
I'm not suggesting changing the rules on downvoting as a solution. I've considered far more drastic measures!

>>Dowwie+En
some hacks I think could increase quality:

  - mandatory 60 second re-click to submit a comment, without edits
  - mandatory 60 second re-click on votes after a rate threshold is exceeded
  - multiple choice votes to express motivation, intention, feedback
  - do not publish karma numbers
  - publish "example threads" that show values being practiced, including dead links/comments examples
  - randomly assign usernames every 12 months
  - tags and tag feeds