If there was a bury/upmod brigade on HN, how would we know?
messel: 1) crap articles rise only as large as the brigade. If they have hundreds or thousands of coordinated voters, they'd be better off at bigger audience sites2) they'd leave a clear repeat user ID/IP trace. So moderator can automate detection of anomalous upvote coincidences3) if they faked new IPs while upvoting and rotated user IDs we'd have a more difficult detection problem. We can look at growth trends of upvotes for derivatives that are anomalous. Coincidental upvotes would show up.4) if the upvote gang rotates IDs, IPs, and upvote intervals the HN team is faced with a fun challenge. Something Digg, Stumbleupon, etc have likely faced in the past. Chances are, your attention isn't worth it. But a dangerous piece of malware may be.Interesting question. What if they faked credentials from low activity members that were compromised?