Someone had a site (I can't remember the details but surely someone will chime in) with custom HN ranking of points divided by number of comments. It was surprisingly effective, though that might have just been the nature of the top stories at the time I checked it. If it did work it would be by also filtering out political and other call-to-action type posts particularly.

I'm with you, I hate the drama posts. I have a kind of half-arsed theory that what I dislike in the evolution of social sites is the inherent community building. I think it tends to get too self-referential.