zlacker

Using score adjustments as automatic community management makes a lot of sense; there are certain topics which are more likely to upvote/rank than others. Similarly, there's also a good bit of research that controversial articles generally do better on Reddit and other social news sites.

Applying an automatic penalty to certain topics / tactics which are likely to gather excessive upvotes, due to the nature of the content vs. it's quality, helps ensure you've got a diverse mix of content occupying the front page. Which is generally good for the overall user experience.

Otherwise, the front page will be a massive list of shock jock posts about the NSA.... [since controversial posts about those subjects will get sympathy votes, regardless of their actual contribution to the community...]