[pg]

Yeah, I know. The underlying problem is the same. I've spent a good deal of time thinking about how to fix it. I wonder if it would work to normalize votes based on how far down the page a comment is. God would that complicate the code though.

[porker]

Could we also have a communal "hide posts by this user" feature? Over time the aggregate data would be useful to detect who is like this - especially if we can select a reason for hiding a user.

[lotharbot]

One of my suggestions to solve the mean-dumb-upvoted comment problem:

if a comment is truly so mean or dumb that the moderators choose to kill it, allow them the option of applying a karma penalty to anyone who upvoted it (which should come with an automated warning message so people know why their karma suddenly dropped). It's, in a sense, a way of voting on votes.

People might still upvote such comments, but at least then they'll know they're taking a risk by violating HN standards.

[chris_l]

Why don't you weight votes by age of the account? That would make the "old HN" more influential in the current one.

[pg]

Interestingly enough, in this case that would have worked. If you only counted the votes of the oldest accounts, the comment in question would have had negative points.

[jamesaguilar]

You should name the feature the anti-bike shed.