> If a post has 50 comments and 25 are "bad" it's a problem, even if the 25 "bad" comments are at the bottom of the page because people will still reply to them and they will still be a part of the discussion.
What is a "bad" comment anyway? Your idea of a bad one is bound to be different from mine, and pg will no doubt have a third view. Would it be possible to present to each user those comments that that user is likely to want to see, based on that user's voting behaviour?
What if users with a registration date around your own or prior had a more significant weight with respect to their votes? That should, at least in theory, keep the content fairly consistent with the quality you came to know around the time you registered.
My account is fairly old as well, but I think PG is correct in trying to discover a rating independent of karma or account age. I don't want to start chasing karma just so my opinion is considered, and I fear a HN where uber-posters hold sway (even more). Similarly, a newish poster who adds huge value shouldn't be disadvantaged because they haven't been around for X years. If they act like PG wants us to, they should get more voting juice.
I'd like to see, as a result of algo changes, less nastiness and better thought-through discussions. Fewer me-too comments, fewer arbitrary no-value comments. I'll happily trust our dictator-for-life on this issue.
I'm not sure that there is an advantage in having an older account under said system, it is more about freezing the ideologies of the rankings during the time at which you signed up. If you signed up during the time that the discussion was all about startups, then your feed should remain predominantly about startups. If you are a more recent subscriber, you will see more political and "learn how to program" type discussions as presumably those topics are what enticed you to sign up at that point in time.
Of course there is danger in that as well, but I see so many lament that they wish it was like it was in the "good old days", where good old days equals the approximate time in which they joined. The way to do that is to let them have the member base just as it was back then, while still letting the site naturally evolve for the rest.
What is a "bad" comment anyway? Your idea of a bad one is bound to be different from mine, and pg will no doubt have a third view. Would it be possible to present to each user those comments that that user is likely to want to see, based on that user's voting behaviour?