Fair points - it may be I'm just not noticing the mods/moderation when it does its job well. I have watched numerous changes happen in policy, like removing up

Fair points - it may be I'm just not noticing the mods/moderation when it does its job well. I have watched numerous changes happen in policy, like removing upvote counts etc., and have never noticed positive results from them, but I may be in the minority, and it may be a plugging holes as a ship sinks phenomenon (ie: not the fault of the hole-pluggers). I guess my feeling is that with a site structured around karma and upvotes it feels messy and complicated to add the "*but sometimes completely changed by moderators." I use sites like this to get something closer to the firehose, not something hyper curated. Give it to me warts and all, at least I'll know what I'm getting then.