I'd be happy to see some experiments with ranking algorithms, maybe in a separate site, or as options within HN as someone else suggested. There are some downsides to both, though (potentially low exposure for the first, technical complexity for the second).
What worries me is the definition of quality you use. We look for submissions that we find valuable for us, not necessarily high quality. Interests are varied, and we all get value from different things. Quality might be very correlated with value, but it's not quite the same. And here comes the big issue: maybe more than 50% of the value we derive from HN comes from the comments. I feel many times we are upvoting submissions by sheer relevance, so we can have valuable discussions about a relevant topic. I don't think the given metrics are capturing this. I like the analysis and the proposal, but it's easy to see how there's some very important perspective missing.
What worries me is the definition of quality you use. We look for submissions that we find valuable for us, not necessarily high quality. Interests are varied, and we all get value from different things. Quality might be very correlated with value, but it's not quite the same. And here comes the big issue: maybe more than 50% of the value we derive from HN comes from the comments. I feel many times we are upvoting submissions by sheer relevance, so we can have valuable discussions about a relevant topic. I don't think the given metrics are capturing this. I like the analysis and the proposal, but it's easy to see how there's some very important perspective missing.