Against a strong reflex of "never change a running system" (because your first paragraph is spot-on and meta like this is already watering down the quality), I wonder if offering "inappropriate for hn" flags to the posting person as lightning rods to prevent that kind of discussion on the main channel could be an improvement.
Categories like "reply jokingly/consent without adding much/dissent without adding much/reply meta" that could be flagged while posting, and filtered out for reading unless explicitly enabled (per flag).
That would most likely ruin hn in one way or the other. Why? Because it must have been tried hundreds of times before and those attempts lie in obscurity while hn works. But how exactly would it fail? "What if" wargaming through possible failure modes is surprisingly fascinating to me (and difficult: in what way exactly would it fail? no idea!).
Categories like "reply jokingly/consent without adding much/dissent without adding much/reply meta" that could be flagged while posting, and filtered out for reading unless explicitly enabled (per flag).
That would most likely ruin hn in one way or the other. Why? Because it must have been tried hundreds of times before and those attempts lie in obscurity while hn works. But how exactly would it fail? "What if" wargaming through possible failure modes is surprisingly fascinating to me (and difficult: in what way exactly would it fail? no idea!).