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What would happen if you make reddit/HN submission score = to # of people who comment on it?

3 points by amichail ↗ HN
Would this result in more and better discussion generally? What sorts of submissions would make the front page?

7 comments

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mcav
More people would comment just for the sake of commenting. Comment quality would suffer.
amichail
But poor comments would be downvoted.
mcav
Perhaps a more interesting solution: Make article points equal the total number of points in comments. (Naturally that's not a perfect solution either.)
jstraszheim
Controversial and flamey topics would shoot to the top and more considered, but denser topics would languish.
blasdel
I think it'd definitely be a good idea to make submission upvotes not count towards karma, or be counted separately.
thepanister
It's a good idea but it's not practical. It won't make a proper measure.

Sometimes I make 3 or 4 comments on a submission that I wish I could down-vote it.

lacker
It might be useful as one factor in a complicated score function. You need a factor that diminishes the score over time, too, so it can't be quite as simple as you describe. In general it seems like you don't want a comment saying "This is as insulting as it is factually incorrect" to count as an up-vote.