Am I the only one who despises the gamification and absurd elitism present in this product? I've neven been fond of exclusivity, and am of the opinion that good content ecosystems are resilient and will surface superior content regardless of the number of people present. The "tragedy of the commons" argument is a total straw man, and if anything is erroneous. HN thrives <i>because</i> of the volume of people and diversity of content.<p>Good content is good content, irrespective of who discovered it or how much notoriety they have. It's not the prerogative of the site to make arbitrary decisions about who ought to be able engage in the discussion or who ought to be able to submit content. Such draconian, "karma"-based restriction will likely preclude the submission of a lot of great stuff and will make it more difficult for newcomers to engage with the site.<p>HN is pretty damn good at surfacing interesting content. Restricting submissions and users in an arbitrary manner is not the way to improve news aggregation.