I like the concept of voters being an intermediate category between producers/writers and consumers/readers. However, I’d argue that, on Hacker News, the commen

I like the concept of voters being an intermediate category between producers/writers and consumers/readers. However, I’d argue that, on Hacker News, the commenters are the actual “content creators” of the HN “community”. It’s easy to submit a URL while it takes substantially more effort (time and thought) to make a useful contribution to an interesting discussion (though submitters are necessary to kick-start the discussions).