What I'm driving at is a product level change. I think some of the product changes like the addition of "Show HN" did come from grassroots requests from the use

What I'm driving at is a product level change. I think some of the product changes like the addition of "Show HN" did come from grassroots requests from the users. I could be mistaken but I see that given a certain product the quality of writing form the users is going to be relatively constant. There could be some influx of users (from some marketing, PR or viral effect) that changes the landscape but I don't expect anything like this to occur in HN in the near future. Therefore, I think to change the quality of comments the product needs some level of change. The product change would either have to change the motivations for the current users or attract other users who write higher quality comments. I also thing you undersell the "internet points". Without some sort of karma system you would likely have something like 4Chan or the comments in Youtube. Further, reducing my statements down to a squabble about "internet points" is reductionist and inaccurate. The larger effect is that down-votes can literally remove a comment. All in all, I think the current mechanics support passive aggressive interactions between users and penalize overt disagreements. I think most people would agree that the former isn't a good thing but the latter is where I would imagine there are widely differing viewpoints.