I am calling it, this will be the deathknell of hackernews, you can already see huge bias in the stories that get flagged on this site now you will see it in every comment.
I agree. This is an incredibly drastic (proposed) change to HN. I think that, years from now, it will be written:
As his final act before leaving YC
Paul Graham shut down Hacker News (= pend-on* nil)