But karma is very linear, and it's a point system so it encourages gaming. What we want is a system where the genuine participant can contribute with value and not be drown out. Hacker News is small enough that i can contribute and by merits of my post alone, maybe hit the front page. That doesn't happen on reddit, digg, or yahoo buzz.
Giles Bowkett had a post a month or so ago pointing out the same thing. PG's response was basically that admin policing should cut off people trying to game the system with irrelevant content:
Presumably, he's hoping that by limiting the scope of the content, he can limit the number of interested participants and therefore the scale of the site.
