There are two extremes, neither one better than the other: The proposed extreme is to encourage community via personalization. I personally disagree with this:

There are two extremes, neither one better than the other: The proposed extreme is to encourage community via personalization. I personally disagree with this: web sites are typically too big to be communities in a natural sense. What you will get is increased visibility for a small elite of spam-heavy commentators. The other extreme is 2ch-style anonymity. This is open to mob abuse, but it also discourages powergaming. The core issue is how to continue scaling the system to match interests when they reach hundreds or thousands for every front-page story. news.yc is getting there already....