[Mz]

This talk of "punishing" is discouraging.

The chill effect very seriously concerns me. Assumptions of guilt do enormous harm to trust and undermine genuine civility. People need to feel it's reasonably safe to open their mouths and they need to feel they don't have to walk on eggshells or be perfect, that there is some room for being human, making mistakes, and so on. Robust discussion cannot thrive without some tolerance for friction. Finding ways to lubricate the process is good. This proposed approach is not lubrication.

[kb101]

I guess the message that this sort of moderation (whether done by human or by algorithm) sends is "don't come here unless you already fully understand and appreciate the ethos and mission of this site, and don't post unless your contribution is going to be something of the highest quality possible, according to the standards of the site".

Which is fine as far as it goes, but basically when you boil that down it's "don't screw up, or else."

That isn't what attracted me here. What attracted me here was reading interesting links and thought-provoking discussion, and thinking "man, I need to up my game so I can participate meaningfully".

If the goal is to have a members-only kind of retreat from the mundane, then I suppose the notion of creating an underclass of posters who don't even know they are being ignored makes sense. But in that case, why not take it a step further and just require applications and screen out members in the first place?

If the goal is to grow the site and generate more traffic, then I would submit that encouraging people to emulate quality contributors is a better approach... why not flip this algorithm on its head. Instead of hell-banning those who score poorly, add in a karma boost for those who score optimally... and an indicator on articles that meet the site criteria for quality.

People don't like to do as they're told, but they sure like to do what got somebody else a gold star.

[Mz]

What attracted me here was reading interesting links and thought-provoking discussion, and thinking "man, I need to up my game so I can participate meaningfully".

I participate to up my game. This approach tends to kill that possibility (or at least contribute to slowly killing it).

If the goal is to grow the site and generate more traffic,

As I understand it, the actual business goal of the site is to help YC screen applicants: Your user-name is a required part of your application to YC and (if no one else) PG will go check your comments. Since start-up founders tend to be young and therefore probably a bit socially wet behind the ears, it seems to me that being too controlling about the site in that regard is potentially a bad business decision.