> A group of people who spend waaayyyyy too much of their life on those platforms and by now identify with it way too much get power-hungry. Though, what is "w

> A group of people who spend waaayyyyy too much of their life on those platforms and by now identify with it way too much get power-hungry. Though, what is "waaayyyyy too much"? Someone who consistently responds to a question on SO every day or checks 10 pages on WP for language issues every day? And are long timers really power-hungry or just fed up with discussing the same things over and over again? (Not saying the latter is better.) I'm sure what you say is true for some, but I think the vast majority is actually civilized and most of the time quietly doing their thing for a project. What I am missing with most "power awarding" algorithms is a time factor: Respect has to be earned again and again and some "powerful" person who has been inactive for a year can easily come across as condescending to someone who has been very active and engaged in a project for just the last 9 months and thus does not have more than baseline respect for the old timer because s/he never saw him/her in action. An example of a, in my opinion, better solution would be to lose 10% of your karma for every month of inactivity on HN (just an example, I don't think HN suffers from the problems described) or removal of the "auto patrol" flag for users who have been inactive on WP for some time.