I hear you. Overtime the gamification systems have been deemphasized as my assumptions in that area have been proven incorrect. The way users earn a badge currently is by completing virtual events thrown by various communities on the platform. The idea being, I wanted some kind of incentive for users who otherwise aren't interested in certain communities or topics to participate in them and to encourage each community to be inviting to the greater Confidist population. Those "rewards" will be changed from being based on completion to being granted by "any" participation in those events. I want to see how that iteration goes. I think without something along these lines the natural self selection around echo chambers is far too great. I think the next step will be to remove leaderboards but allow for these badges to be viewed possibly when interacting with individual users, but not shown globally. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, much appreciated.
HN at least caps downvotes at -4. I also rarely get an upvote unless I put some thought into my comment. The points seem to be a good reflection of quality outside a handful of hot topics.
Compare this to Reddit where I often check the profile of someone who made an atrocious comment (in quality or content), and they have tens or hundreds of thousands of points. I rarely see that on HN.