I considered shutting the site down for a couple hours a day. More people disliked that idea than liked it
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=372593
but the vote was close enough that I might still try it.
To me, the alarmingly addictive thing about HN is that something interesting could happen at any time. Removing this real-time aspect, HN would still be interesting, but no more addictive than a good issue of the New Yorker or whatever.
The comments won't work as well if they aren't done in real time in the current format. One possible solution would be to add a separate section for active comment threads. This might serve as an acceptable way to slow them down, or keep them visible longer. However, the real time comments are a large part of what makes this site addictive, but it's also what provides a fair amount of the value.
I'm a strong advocate of hiding the karma counts entirely (for users, submissions, and comments). That greatly reduces the conditioning effect, not to mention karma-related drama and groupthink (as Surowiecki argues, crowd wisdom is best procured when evaluations are performed independently). Submissions and comments can still be ordered by net karma over time, as they are now.
Whatever you choose to do, I think there's a strong argument in favor of experimentalism. Especially since the site isn't a commercial undertaking and can deal with the occasional disruption.
1. Limit the number of votes users get a day/hour/time_period - This might make people more discerning (in general, but also perhaps where they put their time).
2. No karma for story votes. Still have voting, but just don't count it (either that or have it as a separate score) -- Possibly make people more focused on comments on a few more sticky topics rather than a constant stream of topics... Right now the karma system (perhaps) encourages more and more articles.
Or, to lift a more succinct phrase, "lead us not into temptation". ;)
But for all the people not on the fence, you're denying them responsibility for their own choices. I can't help but feel that your stated agreement with me that individuals should be responsible for themselves is empty if you support measures that take all choice away from them.
I feel guilty when I go more than a day w/o checking ycnews (I know, this is bad!). However, I think I've figured out why - I don't want to miss posts that will make me a better hacker. For example, last week there was a "Top 10 tips for linux admins" post where I actually learned something useful (I didn't know about the reset command, when you corrupt a shell by more-ing a binary file).
Is there a way, via some combination of features and/or "Ask HN" style tags, to mark posts as useful? I have nothing against posts that are not useful (but nonetheless interesting). However, if I could filter the posts by utility, it would make it easier to stay off the site for a while, and also make the time here more "justifiable".
There certainly could be downsides to such a system, that I haven't considered.
2)Show fewer stories per page. Or perhaps, show far more. The larger number of stories may seem daunting and remind the person of the sheer number of many interesting things out there, and consequently, the diluted interest of any one.
3) Make the time spent more explicit^. I understand that RescueTime and their ilk do this, but it would be far more salient if you had showed the net amount of time spent on HN on a day; to make in even more salient have the font increase in relation to time spent, with color coding to indicate dangerous levels of time spent.
^-Where HN is dangerous is that you often click your way here thinking you can get back to work after a minute's worth of a scan, but these breaks add up.
I sort of have this system already - I watch my karma and try and use that as a negative feedback loop (i.e. try and keep in the same general increase as other peers).
I've gotten into a routine of waking up and spending about half an hour on mail / news and then switching on Freedom.app for 2-3 hours to turn off my networking. I leave the local intranet connected so that if I really need to find some piece of info I can SSH to another box and use lynx. This helps me get into the groove most days.
Recall in the old days when people had a flash intro page and you had to continue to see the real content? You could start out with some page saying "You really should be working" but they could still click through. Maybe show this for 1 hour a day.