> Not everything submitted to HN "deserves" to receive upvotes, to be perfectly honest.

This is certainly true. It is also the case that some things submitted to HN deserve upvotes and don't get them. A case in point, this very article:

  Try #1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10007658
          ==> 4 points by curtis 17 hours ago | discuss

  Try #2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10011219 (this submission)
          ==> 42 points by curtis 2 hours ago | 18 comments

The obvious conclusion is that the first submission didn't get upvotes just because it wasn't very good -- it simply didn't deserve them. And the second submission got upvotes because it was better. It was quality content. But of course in this example, they're the same article!

Now let me be clear. I understand that it is the nature of this particular beast that there is simply going to be a lot of randomness. However, I believe we can make it noticeably less random with some fairly modest effort. And if we can make it less random, then I think that would be a good thing. Would the proposed "preview" page actually do that? I don't know. But I certainly think it's worth talking about.