zlacker

I see this is a question of group culture. We learn by looking around and imitating. We all acknowledge this behavior when advising startups to ship products and learn on the way. This group is no different; the main difference is, that it grows too fast to learn from old members and reading a guideline can be compared to reading a book about startups versus doing it. Here are my suggestions I hope they will be helpful:

for all new users and all existing users with karma<100

* on create account page give link to Guidelines to read and before signing up give us a quiz with 20 questions to assess our understanding of the most important ones. This would also give us a clear message that attitude and quality is very important on HN.

for all users

* rename "comments" to "thoughts" and add "chat" link to convore/wompt for a relaxed discussion. From "chats" users can deduct quality material to "thougts" for history value.

for users with karma<100

* include explanations on down-votes so we can understand our mistakes an learn from them. Give us a chance to become better rather then killing us and wait for us to reappear as yet another troll.

* make submit button on "thoughts" to countdown 10 seconds (with bail-out option) to give us time to rethink if the post is really useful