I've found that HN tends to upvote "good" comments, so most threads end up bringing the important stuff on top. Usually the insightful stuff comes from experts, since being an expert helps! And people like patio11 end up consistently on the top of comment threads because it's Good Content(TM). But sometimes someone relatively unknown will simply be making a good point. That's what I'm here for, the good information. And at least in our industry, either the experts are on here, or they're not but their followers will post a link to their blog/G+ and the information shows up on here anyways.
If we had Twitter-style "voice proportional to follower count/retweet potential" stuff, then a lot of things would fall through the cracks. Sometime's I'm curious about what person X thinks about a thing, but I've found it's a feeling too similar to wanting to hear gossip/validation of my own thoughts, rather than the Quest For Knowledge.
1. They're already speaking from a position of superiority in a certain sense, whereas on HN you're just in a conversation with everybody. You might be pretty important, but then maybe Alan Kay will jump in or something.
2. There isn't the same kind of prompting on Twitter that we get from the stories here which commenters are replying to. Instead, it's just the expert talking about whatever they want: maybe interesting to them, but not so much to everybody else.
3. The Twitter format doesn't encourage the same depth of discussion as HN, stemming from the initial character limit, but perhaps now just a vestigial consequence.
It could be interesting to have a site somewhere between HN and Twitter though—something that filters out more newbs/trolls, but doesn't exclude capable unknowns. Maybe you need an invite from someone involved in order to join, or maybe there are some questions you'd be required to answer which might establish you're on the right side of some threshold of intelligence, creativity, decentness, ability to communicate, etc.
Then again, I also agree HN is doing a pretty good job of ensuring good comments become visible.
In a lot of ways, I think Advogato[2] was on to something with their web of trust. The line on wikipedia Despite the trust metric, posting privileges to the front page of Advogato have been gained by controversial individuals, leading some to claim Advogato's trust metric solution is faulty. seems like sour grapes. I still think its worthy of another couple of steps down that path.
Also, I think folks miss handling the joy of tangents cause a lot of problems in moderation that are really just a structure problem. Mostly they are marked as off-topic and down-voted which cuts down on some amazing streams of knowledge. I have yet to see a system that allows branching of something the poster knows will be off-topic but is a tangent of the main article. It seems like generated articles might be the way to go and leave a "tangent pointer" in the main article. I think solving the tangent problem would solve a lot of moderation problems and hard feelings of the users.
I really don't like some solutions, like shadow banning or making every comment by a user drop to the bottom of the sort right away with little hope of getting "above the fold" no matter how many upvotes the comment gets.
1) Although, quite a few people actually do want to be part of the majority with only the "acceptable" opposition represented. This pattern repeats so often, it makes me think its just baked into humanity's tribal thinking.
I've had some discussions with the lobste.rs folks about another attempt to do a sophisticated trust metric, but nothing ever rose to the level of "we should do this."
Interestingly, a lot of people know who the real experts are. I sometimes wonder about why most systems focus on the internal to the exclusion of any real world input.
1. Managing egos can become a problem, maybe some sort of ability for users to tag comments with logical fallacies to try and encourage rational arguments?
2. Could users use some sort of anonymous verification for throwaway comments? A global key to sign their anonymous comment? There's definitely work done in this category, I found https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-36213-2_... after a quick google.
I think you bring up a slightly different point in the end, the gatekeeper/moderator is a much harder problem to solve and related to the clash of egos. Ultimately, rewarding critical thinking, limiting power of censorship and growing the community organically are key here
That would basically become ProductHunt. And if you emphasize Ask HN, you end up with early Quora.
The real killer, imho, would be to give automatic prominence to actual experts and "players" in their fields. The best side of HN for me is (or was) watching the interaction of "nerd-celebs" and makers, but they are now discouraged by the volume of noise (which includes yours truly). Moderation can only do so much.