Would you pay $5/yr for HN?
natch: No. Building a critical mass of good users is hard enough without adding false friction.If you're looking for a place to improve, I'd look at the way karma is used.IMHO sites like HN should continue innovating with ways to better calculate and utilize karma. In most cases, it's done very badly, rewarding early commenters disproportionately, so that people with a lot of time on their hands get a bigger voice.