[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.