I think these are great ideas. If followed, it's likely that we would all start seeing something closer to the HN we want to be a part of. I must say however that I don't expect this post to cause the change. Not because it's a bad post or has bad ideas within it but because it is just a post and will fall to the bottom soon and many people will miss it.

I think there are more fundamental problems with the site and the way it works.

I replied to this post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4488561 yesterday explaining what I think the issues are. Because I think it applies here as well, I'll re-post it below.

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I'm not sure how submissions like this are still showing up so commonly or how they arrive at the top of the list. If ever there was a community of people capable of solving the problem of "improving HN", this is the one. I supply a problem statement and solution below.

Problem: HN has problems which seem not to get fixed despite recommendations made to the maintainer(s?). Why? I suspect it's because maintaining HN is one of the lowest priority jobs to the maintainer of HN. The guy is busy! Fixing problems or implementing possible features quickly would have very low ROI to such a person. This isn't to say that he(they?) doesn't care - just doesn't have time because his other responsibilities are actual responsibilities, not a hobby. This is the equivalent of hiring an independently wealthy person to work for your company. The person may really like working for you, but you can't rely on them. They have little incentive to stick around if they get even slightly bored.

Solution: Make a new one. Someone make something better. You know where your primary audience lives (here) so you know where to find users. Monetize it in some way so that I know you'll keep working on it. Make it your full time gig. With the number of users you could get, you wouldn't have to ask for much. A donation model would probably pay you a pretty good salary. Be nice to the community and make reasonable attempts to fix the issues they bring up. They'll probably even help you fix them if you need them to.
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As you can see, I think the problems are more low-level. For example, I don't have a lot of karma. I don't submit things but I do comment occasionally. I've never been in an uncivil argument on here and I feel I carry myself in a way that benefits the community. But because of how the HN application works, I can't down vote. I'm not saying that the ability to down vote would fix the issues, but it's one small part of it. Reddit gives everyone the ability to down vote and most comments/submissions which are considered inappropriate (mind you Reddit necessarily has a higher tolerance do to variety of content) get down voted out of site so that the majority of users never perceive it as even being a problem. This is all because Reddit arms it's users with the tools to make Reddit what they want it to be.

I could gain the ability to down vote on HN by getting more karma but I have no idea what amount I'm trying to get and I would likely find myself posting things just to get there which would also bring the overall quality of HN down.

Reddit also allows the posting of rules in a prominent location where everyone could see them. That's what this post needs. You've created good guidelines. Throughout the day, they will get better as people pick them apart and add their opinions. By the end of the day, these rules would probably be suitable for posting prominently in the side bar of all pages within the HN app. But they won't be. They'll fall to the bottom and be forgotten. It's unfortunate.

We could ask the maintainer to post it prominently on the side of the pages, but it's very unlikely to happen as it would take some UI tweaks, etc.. The point is, we need an application that lives and breathes. One which changes when it needs to. If for no other reason than to test theories about what may help. We need a HN that is the full-time job of someone, not a side project.

[edited for clarity and typos]