There is no way for the community to effectively exert influence on the behavior of new members. That is the problem. A complicated algorithm or formula will no

There is no way for the community to effectively exert influence on the behavior of new members. That is the problem. A complicated algorithm or formula will not fix this. Sure it can. If you hide low-scoring comments from low-ranking users, but show them to high-ranking users, the high-ranking users can exert influence on the low raking-users by upvoting quality comments and downvoting poor ones. It becomes a self-organizing system with a bias towards quality, rather than the open loop 'majority rules' system currently in place.