[ryanwaggoner]

Is that the only reason? If so, would it be possible to offer a public place to view apps that was separate from the main page? Judging by the popularity of the "review my startup" posts, I bet tons of people would be interested in reading them.

[pg]

Honestly, I don't know. That problem was bad enough that I didn't think further about what other bad (or good) consequences there might be of letting people make applications public.

My gut tells me it would be a bad idea. I sure wouldn't have done it as a founder, and if only lame groups did this, there would be no upside, only downside. But I could be wrong; I haven't thought more about it than what I just wrote.

[ryanwaggoner]

What if there was a high karma threshold for viewing the apps? Like 1000 or something.

[jwhitlark]

I think 1k is too high. > 100 would probably be enough to get rid of trolls. It's not hard to get to that point, but you have to put in legitimate effort to do so.