The upvote/commentary is likely going to be highly problematic:
A) I'm pretty sure Dang can't list all 9 accounts I've used on HN over the past few years. I'm also pretty sure 9 accounts in good standing [1500+ karma] would be enough to seed an initial vote if handled carefully. The ones he'd be able to name are the 3 most recent. This being the case...yeah. The danger of sock puppetry is way too high, particularly when combined with strategic downvotes and VPNs.
B) Anyone with control of an existing community/following can use it as a targeted campaign.
C) The reward from bypassing these functions is substantially higher ($20,000 + professional advice from YC) than previously existed for YC.
D) If you want to stick with a vote-based system, I'd offer a larger bounty [say, $50k for manipulating a post to the top of the pile for Apply HN] for finding a way to bypass the vote brigading and other countermeasures. This it is really the only countermeasure I can think of to counter manipulation problems.
E) All the other external factors (time of submission, competition around that time period, repost rules, etc.) are likely to bias the process in unexpected ways but that is probably less problematic than direct manipulation.
> I think we're on the same page to some extent. What I meant by 'ranking by comments' is that we want the ranking to depend on the quality of the discussion. That's the one thing that can't be gamed.
Put a bounty on that to test that theory.
I'm pretty sure someone could create a network of socket puppets that had "quality" discussions between them if the reward was $20k.