I do care about karma.

I care because it's a measure of whether what I say is agreeable or disagreeable. It's not about fitting in or following the herd, but if I say something that loses me karma I want to understand why. Maybe I'll end up with the same opinion anyway or maybe it teaches me to think more before I talk. Mostly, karma helps me reflect on my opinions and question those opinions.

The only thing I would do with HN is to _force people to comment when they downvote_

If you agree with me, then an upvote with no commentary is fine. If you downvote me, tell me why. Maybe I could learn something, maybe I get the chance to explain myself better, maybe an open disagreement on a point enriches the community.

... And much of the time, I think asking for a comment with a down vote is a good idea.

Except, there are obvious trolls. Or someone else has already explained why the comment was inappropriate.

It happens enough that the reason for the downvote seems—to me—facially clear ... so while I agree it's a good courtesy in most situations, I don't think enforcing it would help. Maybe a UI change could encourage this behavior (e.g., highlight "reply" on downvote), but this loses some of the clean look of HN ...

Maybe if it's out of band somewhere. If comments are not worth reading (IMHO the purpose of downvoting) I would usually prefer not to plow through subthreads explaining why.

The only thing I would do with HN is to _force people to comment when they downvote_

How do you prevent a: 'Downvoted for being moronic->No, you are' kind of thread?

You mean in a situation where a comment is out of order, abusive, or some other obviously bad comment?

I guess if comments were forced on downvotes, let's say "I downvoted you for being a moron" than instead of leaving your own version of "you're a moron" you could add your weight to the first downvote-comment.

So like downvoting with a comment, but kind of adding your weighting to someone elses downvote for the same reason.

Despite occasional complaints from users being down-voted, I have appreciated that in most cases when a user is down-voted and asked for an explanation he is given it.

I don't care much about karma. But, I do care about having the freedom to post stuff that I find interesting. Now, I am assuming that most of the noise will be either from new members or from members with low karma. If they are penalized something like 5 karma for submissions (and they can't submit if they don't have 5 karma), then that will both passively and actively discourage spamming. A karma threshold can also be applied to new users to encourage them to first participate int he discussion and understand the ethos of HN.

Edit: I want to clarify that I am in favour of deducting karma for new submissions. The comment system is already fairly balanced thanks to the option to downvote. What I am suggesting is essentially a mirror image of the parent article.

i think the idea is more like stackoverflow - where your points (karma) gives you access to certain things. If you have 0 karma - you cant comment. If you have low karma - you want to 'save' your posts for valid comments that are likely to get upvoted, thus giving you more karma to make more posts etc.

i.e. people who post 'crap' and get continually downvoted will eventually be silenced.

I think that HN already has Karma thresholds below which you can't downvote (or change the colourscheme!)

Presumably part of the change would be that accounts with 0 karma would not be able to post? Perhaps the grandparent could elaborate.

Yes, the OP explains that positively voted submissions would be necessary before voting.

Apologies, thought that this was an "Ask HN thread" and missed the OP article.