So, that sounds like it could be frustrating, but one possibility is to try to find a metric for measuring it, to double-check your sense that quality is declin

So, that sounds like it could be frustrating, but one possibility is to try to find a metric for measuring it, to double-check your sense that quality is declining. Looking at frequency of [flagged] and downvoted leaves open the possibility that it is the sensitivity that has increased, rather than the quality decreased. So, you make a web scraper that brings to you a random sample of HN comments, without telling you the date, and you rate them as to quality. Then it stores the date, and your rating, in a datastore which you can analyze. There, you have just found a nice little project to occupy your mind less frustratingly than before. Once you do the analysis, either: 1) you discover there is no real trend, and can relax 2) you discover there IS a real trend, and you can bring us back that evidence, which would be fascinating