They were pretty clear about it - they screwed up by underestimating the scale of the problems. It's better to admit your mistake quickly and try to fix things.
Instead of building a Web of Trust, a better solution might be to find efficient ways of clustering people.
Look how civil and insightful this discussion is. Why? Because people have different "quality", even if it's not politically correct to talk about it, we all know it intuitively.
Imagine a forum, where all the HN-level people are gradually clustered together, all the rednecks with conspiracy theories, all the leftists dreaming of communism, all form their own independent echo-chambers.
Yes, echo-chambers are bad, but let's face it, you won't be able to change most people's opinions anyway. Don't agree with me? Go on reddit, try saying something "controversial", like "men can't get pregnant", see how many people you would be able to convince :)
> magine a forum, where all (...) form their own independent echo-chambers.
That would be a horrible nightmare. You are falling for the same identity politics trap of the ones you are implicitly criticizing. You being on HN makes you no better than the "others".
> you won't be able to change most people's opinions anyway.
Who cares about "changing most people's opinions"?
Sure, just be aware of what you're up against: if religion teaches us anything it's that even concerted, systematic efforts over millennia to conquer human nature (eg: libido) still fail. But if you want to give it a go, by all means: one can only imagine Sisyphus happy.
Hm, I didn't know about this bot. It's a new one, created in March this year. I created my bot 3 years ago, there was nothing like it then.
Looks similar, with additional functionality.
Sad, actually, my bot got zero traction and so somebody had to write their own bot, which is now more popular... So much for motivation to create new things... Oh, well.
:)
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