I found that the most significant factor in diminished reliability was simply to let people have infinite moderation powers all the time.
Interesting observation since, IMO, unlimited "moderation powers" has been the biggest problem with Digg and (as of late) Reddit. I'm hopeful that HN can avoid this fate (no downvotes until the karma threshold is reached seems to help somewhat).
Personally I see HN's fate as worse than that of Digg and Reddit. HN's karma rating system reinforces an exclusive community. If someone who 'goes against the grain' tries to add diversity to the HN community, they will never get any karma, which means they will never have any power.
IMHO, the worst part about HN is the extreme homogeneity, and the system is designed to reinforce this. The recent discussion about display points is an example of this. Removing points is said to "reduce arguments" ... which is really just another way of "reducing disagreement".
I disagree - I don't fit in perfectly with the typical HN demographic (I'm black and I'm not a programmer), and I've made comments that disagree with consensus, and so long as I've been able to back up those comments, I've gotten upvotes.
Contrast that with Reddit where I can link to all kinds of supporting studies but if it's contrary to the hivemind's opinion, I'll get downvoted to oblivion while someone with a differing opinion based on something he heard from his best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend will get an upvote for an unsupported opinion that aligns with the group.
Of course that's just anecdotal experience on my part, so perhaps you're correct and this comment should be downvoted :)
Agree to this,
Just experienced Karma retaliation a couple of weeks ago myself. After commenting an apposing view on a comment of a high Karma HN person, all my later comments were downvoted in a consistent manner.
It was just to coincidental to attribute all the down votes to sudden lower quality of comments...
I currently rate 1756 karma and I contribute nothing of value to news.yc.
Getting karma here happens with little effort. I have trouble losing karma! It generally only happens when a comment really strikes a nerve[1] like in the suicide thread. My top level comment went pretty far negative (surprises me to see it back to 0 points). My nested comment with nearly the same sentiment as the top level currently sits at +29.
I never check a user's krama on HN prior to giving his opinion any weight. You have less karma than I do. Does that change anything whatever about this discussion? In fact you have a bunch of replies telling you how you get it wrong, and your dissenting comment has done just fine.
Unlimited Points leads to strange abuses. Creating scarcity minimized abuse, and increased the chance that people would use them up. Otherwise 1% of users create 99% of the moderations, and it only takes 1 bad apple to ruin the pie. YMMV!
But the top comments on Reddit and YC for the same news story are as good or better than the top comments on /. for the same story. That would make me feel like the unlimited moderation powers don't do a lot. For example, at the time I am writing this visiting the UN story on Hackers has "Quick, someone log in with all of them, and announce World Peace!" among other comments immediately visible with a +3 score.
Interesting observation since, IMO, unlimited "moderation powers" has been the biggest problem with Digg and (as of late) Reddit. I'm hopeful that HN can avoid this fate (no downvotes until the karma threshold is reached seems to help somewhat).