You have two options-- you can submit great stories or you can complain.

Choose wisely.

No. The solution is to allow downvoting the original submissions, not only the comments.

I see really crappy submissions occasionally. I just don't want them to show and I'd like their authors to refine their submitting strategy, so I just want to downvote. And the argument that I can upvote other stories instead is flawed - it'd require me to be here all the time, which is an evil requirement.

No, there's a third choice. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1777665

[edit: An idea which I wouldn't know about if I hadn't seen it here. For me, HN still is good enough to spend time with. But it has grown less stringent about humor and links to images, which I think reduces S/N.]

...or I can find somewhere else to spend my time. :-)

scholar.google.com

Citations == Upvotes, Abstract == TLDR, and content is far, far more superior.

Jokes are OK, but not when they're not even a little amusing.

This does seem like it's 1/2 step away from LOLCATS.