[nkurz]

While I appreciate your insight and experience, you might want to view http://news.ycombinator.com/newest with and without "showdead" turned on for your account: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jaylevitt

Frequently over half the submissions are dead spam, presumably killed by the policy in question. I rarely see false positives. While the quality of the remainder isn't always great, it's a lot better than it would be if there were no controls in place.

ps. Flag some spam while you're there :)