I was remembering an old online zombie game, I think it was called Zombòia or something like that. It had a curious system: if a player behaved badly or the community saw them as having bad intentions because they stole resources, etc., they could be hanged. All it took was enough people voting for them to be blocked and unable to continue bothering the public.

I think something similar could work on Stacker News. Today there's an outlaw mode, but the truth is that spam still appears. Imagine a system where, if a user accumulates enough downvotes from the community, they're blocked from posting for a while. It would be like "hanging the spammer," a collective punishment decided by the community itself.

Ultimately, Stacker has always had that spirit of self-governance and decentralization. Perhaps giving the community that tool would be a more organic way to curb spam without relying solely on central moderation.