Long ago in the mists of time, some Usenet groups had a wonderful policy of self-moderation.  If you wanted to post something, you had to figure out how to add an &quot;Approved&quot; header to your own post.   A hassle the first couple times you had to do it, but great for overall signal-to-noise after that:  <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;meatballwiki.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;AltHackers" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;meatballwiki.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;AltHackers</a><p>I&#x27;m occasionally tempted to think that HN should in the same direction:  no links whatsoever, everything is plain text.  You want to read the article, you cut-and-paste.  Or write your own browser extension, or whistle it into a cell-phone or something.  Terrible for rapid reading, but would definitely cut down on the complaining about paywall tags.  One-click links probably violate some Amazon patent anyway.<p>Taking it a step farther, all submissions must be done rot13.  If you can&#x27;t figure out how to translate a link to rot13 (or install an appropriate browser extension), maybe you shouldn&#x27;t be posting here.  Not because you are inherently unworthy, but because you haven&#x27;t bothered to read and follow the instructions.  The instructions could be given on the bottom of the guidelines page, and all improperly formatted submissions could redirect to the guidelines: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a><p>I feel like it&#x27;s either that, or more all-Erlang days:<p><pre><code>  You can help the spike subside by making HN look extra 
  boring. For the next couple days it would be better to have 
  posts about the innards of Erlang than women who create 
  sites to get hired by Twitter.
</code></pre>
pg, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=512145" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=512145</a><p>And while you are at it, get off my lawn. :)