>The only way Way to start with a false premise. The main way on HN is efforts, both by mods and by users, to buoy up good content, and push down bad content.

>The only way Way to start with a false premise. The main way on HN is efforts, both by mods and by users, to buoy up good content, and push down bad content. >[is to] remove some of the anonymity Not even close. Preventing cheap creation of new identities isn't inherently tied to identification of users; there already deployed alternatives. One example, TeamSpeak uses proof of work - a computational process that's expensive to perform and cheap to verify - to protect identity creation. Works wonders, and allows anonymity just fine. At any rate, the thrust of my argument is different, and cuts deeper into your idea: any automated process, any guaranteed outcome, will be subverted and put to bad ends. To grow & maintain a good community you need active management by intelligent agents (ordinarily, people). And not just by selected mods - it helps when typical user is well aware what is up and able to fend for himself.