When I first visited Hacker News, I was a little offput by the design, but quickly embraced it after discovering the quality of content. I now see this as an ad

When I first visited Hacker News, I was a little offput by the design, but quickly embraced it after discovering the quality of content. I now see this as an advantage, as it can turn away undesirable users that would not add quality to our conversations. I can't guess really whether this effect is true, but anything that could keep this from turning into reddit or digg would be great.