This sounds entirely reasonable. A bunch of web sites went the route of having a bunch of smart, reasonable people get together and make something real.
When those grew, they became popular with idiots, with spamming/SEO/astroturf, and/or taken over by extremists in some direction (at which point, everyone else heads for the door). The web sites became cesspools of crap.
I'm fine being excluded if that means HN continue to have high-quality content. If the pre-2008 accounts start falling off, it wouldn't be too hard to find a pool of high-quality contributors from 12 years of comments, upvotes by pre-2008'ers, etc.
Indeed, I wouldn't mind having explicit tiers, even if I am in a lower one.
Would love to see this for comments as well. I swear some years ago, I used to be able to find some really interesting stuff browsing the "comments" link now I'm more likely to find throwaway_xyz posting flamebait takes.
I don't think it'll work for comments. But maybe, maybe their upvotes can count more than one vote. Or their downvotes (i think it will create more readable comments)
Filtering the comments tab on karma would be good.
Roughly the same as your suggestion of course, since if an early user is still commenting, they almost certainly have accrued a lot over the years, but it would also allow newer entrants that have had well enough received (or enough well received) comments to qualify.
- Promote extremism and groupthink. Try posting any comment which isn't far-left on reddit (outside of the far-right forums, which will be the opposite). You'll be -50.
- Be gameable for SEO and spamming.
- Target the mean. Try posting anything particularly erudite on a reddit or a late slashdot.
I kinda like the crowd which set up HN. It's diverse enough, intelligent enough, and works for me.
When those grew, they became popular with idiots, with spamming/SEO/astroturf, and/or taken over by extremists in some direction (at which point, everyone else heads for the door). The web sites became cesspools of crap.
I'm fine being excluded if that means HN continue to have high-quality content. If the pre-2008 accounts start falling off, it wouldn't be too hard to find a pool of high-quality contributors from 12 years of comments, upvotes by pre-2008'ers, etc.
Indeed, I wouldn't mind having explicit tiers, even if I am in a lower one.