[robg]

One thing I've never understood about forums of this type: Why assume all votes should be equal?

In any knowledge community, some voices mean more than others (e.g., experts and novices). Why shouldn't a similar distinction translate to votes?

[krapp]

Karma doesn't necessarily translate to expertise. Most of my highest-karma comments have been utter nonsense. High karma can mean people have agreed with you, or that you've been here longer than not, and it probably is a good measure that you can conform to the norms of the community, but it doesn't necessarily mean you know what you're talking about.

I mean, people will listen when tptacek talks about cryptography, but that doesn't mean his opinion on design should necessarily matter more than that of a designer with less karma just because tptacek has the bigger integer attached to his name. It's not really more 'fair' for votes by high karma users to outweigh votes by lower karma users.

Unless it already works that way in which case it's the best thing ever and clearly pg is going God's work.

[robg]

I've worked on content-based Bayesian voting schemes. They work well weighting votes by content words. tptacek + cryptography should matter more.

Here, though, it seems as if HN experts and novices may be representative. pg used to run the front page based on karma. Comments seems like a place where that simplistic approach could work well.