I realize that we have these issues, but anything that's not going to make it take way too long for people to be able to submit isn't going to help the signal/noise ratio much.

It's kind of presumptuous and pompous to assume that just because someone hasn't been on HN, they don't know hacker culture through some other means. HN may be "hacker news," but plenty of hackers aren't on HN (even though it may seem as if everyone is on HN now).

And the more emphasis we put on karma, the more people will do things with the intent of enhancing their karma rather than enhancing the discussion.