I've opined a bit elsewhere on what happens to social sites as they get more and more popular.
If you want YC to be, and stay, as a particular sort of thing, then unfortunately you have to actively enforce a particular culture. Since, presumably, you don't want to have to babysit the thing yourself all the time forever, that means picking a handful of people and 'blessing' them to do it for you.
So! Here's one way that might work -- though there're gonna be some objections to it:
Pick a dozen or twenty users that you think really 'get' what you want the site to be about. Set a special flag on them in your database. When they upvote a submission, it counts for a little extra, say 1.5 points; likewise if they downvote a submission. Then, you need to make sure that as people come and go, you still have this active core group of people tuning your site for you. So, if an 'unblessed' user gets habitually upmodded in their comments, or their submissions, by members of your blessed group, over a period of time that unblessed user gets automatically blessed, and their votes count for a little extra too.
This still leaves the door open for debates and arguments, while -- I think -- helping the site to stay on-subject without your active participation all the time.
If you want YC to be, and stay, as a particular sort of thing, then unfortunately you have to actively enforce a particular culture. Since, presumably, you don't want to have to babysit the thing yourself all the time forever, that means picking a handful of people and 'blessing' them to do it for you.
So! Here's one way that might work -- though there're gonna be some objections to it:
Pick a dozen or twenty users that you think really 'get' what you want the site to be about. Set a special flag on them in your database. When they upvote a submission, it counts for a little extra, say 1.5 points; likewise if they downvote a submission. Then, you need to make sure that as people come and go, you still have this active core group of people tuning your site for you. So, if an 'unblessed' user gets habitually upmodded in their comments, or their submissions, by members of your blessed group, over a period of time that unblessed user gets automatically blessed, and their votes count for a little extra too.
This still leaves the door open for debates and arguments, while -- I think -- helping the site to stay on-subject without your active participation all the time.