That is interesting. The problem we're facing is fluff, so it seems fair to devise a strategy targeting fluff specifically. I have a hunch that fluff climbs up

That is interesting. The problem we're facing is fluff, so it seems fair to devise a strategy targeting fluff specifically. I have a hunch that fluff climbs up to the top because of a small group of happy-fluff-voting people (young accounts for some, as PG noted earlier in another thread). If this assumption is right, we could rely on the whole HN community for flagging fluff out effectively, as those happy-fluff-voting people are a minority. I'd discard ideas like allowing downvotes on articles. I do think the decision (by design) not to have downvotes reduces immature voting and also makes it clearer to detect suspect behavior, just like the fluff problem we're facing at the moment (e.g. 20 downvotes added to 40 upvotes brings a total of 20 votes, and thus reduces the alarm signal).