"if people knew that there were more benefits to contributing high quality content/submissions/comments, they might put a bit more time and effort into contributing them."

I find that I carefully word what I write on HN by default. That is the 'culture' of the site. I don't think the median HN reader needs further encouragement to write well. Of course, there are raging dicks everywhere, and people being people will sometimes go off on a tangent. If there was a 'quality of comments' scale, YouTube would probably be near the bottom (just go onto some sorry excuse for a music video and read some spam and inspired fan comments), and HN near the top.

> I don't think the median HN reader needs further encouragement to write well.

perhaps, for now. but if PG's concerns are valid, then it may be the case that this will change. alternatively, consider it a functional way to reinforce the culture.

I doubt the comments here would ever descend to near YouTube levels. For one, trolls on this site are mercilessly modded into the negative, and quickly. The last time I tried to make a snarky comment just for the sake of snark, it got downmodded so fast that I just deleted it. This same comment would probably have hundreds of thumbs up on YouTube by now.

I changed all of my videos to moderated comments on YouTube, and I still receive completely inane ones every day, along with "thumbs up if ____" comments. These, again, would be modded into oblivion here.

Maybe I'm one of the unwelcome newbies that are changing this site for the worse (as I'm not involved in a startup), but I don't think this culture has anything to fear as far as quality dilution goes. Noisy, sure, but still high quality.

More likely they would just spam submissions and vote-bait comments in the hope of gaining enough karma.

I like not having to worry about karma because it means I can speak my mind, instead of simply commenting the popular responses in hope of karma.

thats already happening, more or less. except the culture here is to flag things out of line, and they usually get dealt with. if they're not out of line, then why would it matter?

They get dealt with now, sure, I'm just asking if giving people more incentives to karma whore will have the effect you desire (better submissions/comments; instead of more me-too karma farming comments).