It completely misses the mark in my view: The problem is an overall decline in quality (i.e. mediocre articles). The presented solution fights spam. Two very different things.
Systems like this get gamed pretty heavily too. In this case a spammer could simply set up a bot that downvotes everything with <0.
I'd much prefer a system that subtly boosts the voting power of certain users. Preferably based on something that is difficult to fake. e.g. Seniority + Karma. Assuming that it is indeed true that the old members perform better than the new ones that should improve quality. This would probably create a HN elite...but if that is what it takes to improve the quality of articles then so be it.
Giving the Guidelines a bit more prominence would help to. e.g. linking to them in the submit page. If new members are anything like me then they simply do not look at the bar at the bottom of the page & so never see the guidelines.
Systems like this get gamed pretty heavily too. In this case a spammer could simply set up a bot that downvotes everything with <0.
I'd much prefer a system that subtly boosts the voting power of certain users. Preferably based on something that is difficult to fake. e.g. Seniority + Karma. Assuming that it is indeed true that the old members perform better than the new ones that should improve quality. This would probably create a HN elite...but if that is what it takes to improve the quality of articles then so be it.
Giving the Guidelines a bit more prominence would help to. e.g. linking to them in the submit page. If new members are anything like me then they simply do not look at the bar at the bottom of the page & so never see the guidelines.