To the title of the Poll I say 'No' because a new user ought to be able to submit something interesting even if they haven't said anything in the forum. That said, I second the idea of rate limiting based on low karma.

It would be an interesting dynamic if it cost X karma to submit an article, if you're karma was zero, you could submit once a day or something...

I initially agreed with you, but in a world where anybody can generate as many accounts as they want, allowing users with zero karma to submit doesn't change anything.

If we want to restrict posting access, the community has to have some pre-approval process. Whether it's by comment karma, friend graph, required posting approval by someone else with karma > N, etc.

Who cares if a user is contributing to the discussion by comments if the articles they submit contribute to the discussion?

If a user is only out to get traffic for their sites, then they will tend to submit much and comment little. However, there are bound to be other users who are sincerely contributing who just happen to prefer submitting over commenting. (Should we call them "submissives?" jk)

So there is a reason to care, but distinguishing the exploiters isn't straightforward.

Show me a HN account that earned its karma exclusively from up-moded article posts.

ok...

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gongfudoi 268 submissions, 2 comments, 388 karma

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jkopelman 81 submissions, 1 comment, 613 karma

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=charzom 145 submissions, 6 comments, 890 karma

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jmorin007 803 submissions, 39 comments, 2974 karma

It would be an interesting statistic to see the range of ratios, from those who get their most points from articles to those who get the most from comments and raw points.

For two contrasting examples:

You have about 3.1 comment points for each submission point.

I have about 2.9 submission points for each comment point.

http://searchyc.com/user/davidw

http://searchyc.com/user/parenthesis

raises hand sheepishly I'll admit, it's where the vast majority of mine come from.

I ask you guys questions all the time :D