[muzani]

I believe everyone understands the root cause - people are afraid to ask questions, which stems from crappy moderation, which stems from the karmic system. The founders went on to found Discourse which has the exact same problems in community, which hints heavily that it's a problem with the system.

What I would fix is the karma system.

1) Don't give mod powers and responsibilities to people with high karma; moderation skill is intangible and not related to technical competency.

2) Get rid of "bullying" habits. Punish downvoting by increasing the cost to -1. Or do what other social media has done and hide votes, especially to high karma users.

3) Reset karma to 0, but recognize their peak value. Send an email out on why. This should be enough to get rid of all the people who are in it for the karma, and pull back all the people who were in it to contribute to a knowledge base.

4) Fire all the current moderators. They've collectively done a terrible job. Add their salaries together and use it to poach dang from HN.