[jacobscott]

Putting my graduate student hat on, it seems like what HN is faced with is a problem of mechanism design. If we can agree that the goal of HN is good news and discussion (and defer to pg on the details of exactly how those resolve), then the question is how to design comment/karma features so that the best interest of the community aligns with the best interest of the individual poster.

pg doesn't mention the implications of gaming (in this context, flaws in the mechanism) in the newsnews announcement. I haven't had time to read the entire primary thread, but if anyone has pointers, send them my way.

Also, if any game theory type people are around know more about mechanism, would be interested in what you think of the new commenting features.