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My HN account says that I have been around 983 days. Probably much longer before I signed up for an account. I do think the quality of comments has gone down. More people commenting without putting much thought into it.

I am against putting Karma restrictions to upvote or post Ask HN. It insulates us from attracting newer and possibly better members.

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I think it's an incredibly valuable feature of the site that it draws in people like Joshua Schacter and Jason Fried†. So I'm absolutely with you in the spirit of this comment. However, not showing Jason Fried the "upvote" button and not showing him the "Text" box on submissions isn't going to keep him from contributing. Candidly, I'm guessing he could give a shit about those features.

† Two examples of people who weren't here at the beginning of the site, both of whom are notable company operators.

There's a reason people comment without putting much thought into it: it's because there is an incentive to do so. The earlier you post a comment that simply points out something obvious, the more upvotes you get, so people do that.

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