To use the voting average is a <i>really</i> bad way of doing this. I answer a lot of 'Ask HN' style threads, these are hardly ever voted up and they are a ton of work.<p>If the effect of this change is that doing work like that gets punished then that is really putting the horse behind the cart.<p>For instance:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1049551" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1049551</a><p>Essentially you are punishing people for being nice to others.