What about weighting votes based on karma + time on site? So the top 10 contributors would have karma votes that count for more than someone new to the site?
Why is it just because you've been around for 5 years that your opinions should be greater than those of someone of 5 minutes? or that they should be greater than those who are too busy to spend every waking moment on HN. This would actually allow trolls who have nothing better to do to have better karma than those who actually make intelligent comments.
I think the karma system is fine, and in fact better than some others. The only thing I'd change is the # of karma points something need to get into the rss feed.
