I'm sure there are tons of new users who have registered recently that are great. My point is that by and large they haven't been. Closing user registration for awhile worked well for Metafilter, so I figured I'd bring it up.
tptacek made the best counter-argument for this idea; in that it would also prevent the people we want to hear from from registering; so my idea wasn't that great to begin with.
I don't know where you get the idea that I think I'm somehow better than anyone else; all I said is that the newer users haven't been of the same quality as the older users. That's just my opinion, and you're welcome to disagree with it. I've been very careful not to jump on the "this site is turning into reddit!!!1!" bandwagon, but the unfortunate truth of the matter is that the overall quality on HN has declined, and I blame the new users for that.
I suspect that what really worked for Metafilter was maintaining full-time moderators who eliminate bad posts and talk one-on-one with users who are not contributing well. I think the barriers to registration just prevented the community from growing faster than the moderator team.
tptacek made the best counter-argument for this idea; in that it would also prevent the people we want to hear from from registering; so my idea wasn't that great to begin with.
I don't know where you get the idea that I think I'm somehow better than anyone else; all I said is that the newer users haven't been of the same quality as the older users. That's just my opinion, and you're welcome to disagree with it. I've been very careful not to jump on the "this site is turning into reddit!!!1!" bandwagon, but the unfortunate truth of the matter is that the overall quality on HN has declined, and I blame the new users for that.