So the general sense is that HN used to be great and a more open place. I agree. Here's an idea to prevent and reverse the decline of HN:
Set a large karma threshold for upvoting rights.
If you give a bunch of new users the right to upvote they'll just upvote each other based on their ideas on what makes a good community. There's no way to maintain or enforce the culture of the community when the new members can just bootstrap their own culture base with little to no input from the existing community.
If pg was inclined he could set this threshold, normalize/zero-out the karma scores for all accounts created after date X, and effectively go back in time to that date in terms of who has the power to set the tone and culture of HN.
Set a large karma threshold for upvoting rights.
If you give a bunch of new users the right to upvote they'll just upvote each other based on their ideas on what makes a good community. There's no way to maintain or enforce the culture of the community when the new members can just bootstrap their own culture base with little to no input from the existing community.
If pg was inclined he could set this threshold, normalize/zero-out the karma scores for all accounts created after date X, and effectively go back in time to that date in terms of who has the power to set the tone and culture of HN.