Too much navel gazing is really bad for a site. This isn't to say the essay lacks insight, just that Hacker News is diminished by frequent debates. PG, have yo

Too much navel gazing is really bad for a site. This isn't to say the essay lacks insight, just that Hacker News is diminished by frequent debates. PG, have you considered invite only schemes? What about explicit 'people rank', where friends can rate eachother in a reputation system? That might really help with the quality of comments. It would also help conversation is you could follow people you like. Twitter and Tumblr both do a really good job of 'pick your peers'. I often track these two links: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ivankirigin http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ivankirigin It would be nice if there was a thread stream of selected people. It would make me engage in conversation more often. Too many comments don't have an easy response, making them closer to declarations than discussions. Also, have you considered adding an explicit cost to votes? You could weight those above a certain karma threshold higher if each vote were $0.10.