How about if a comment is losing a significant amount of points then the author is required to view a simple guidelines page on the next visit to HN and sign off on it.
Aren't we discussing the problem that comments that should lose a significant amount of points actually get good scores? Moreover, it's easy to avoid reading bad comments with bad scores.
I was thinking it would contain the offending comment, a little message about it being flagged for not meeting community standards, then briefly list the community standards.
A little word of encouragement and a button to show they've actually got the message- and off they go. I don't think it would need to be confrontational or make them actually agree to anything (since they might have good reason to disagree). But a gentle reminder about acceptable behavior could help new people get acclimated.
