This seems like a good thing for comments. The goal for comments is civility, no...

		palish on April 25, 2011 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Ask PG: How has voting habit/volume changed since ... This seems like a good thing for comments. The goal for comments is civility, not democracy. Actually, the goal is for the comments to be interesting, but they will be because there are interesting people on HN. If interesting people are leaving, then that's a problem. I feel that the tone of comments in general has improved significantly. Maybe that's confirmation bias, but I feel much more "at home" on HN now.

It's still a democracy if high-scoring comments float to the top though. Karma just adds to it by functioning as a reward system.