Unless you remember how the "highlight members with high average comment karma" experiment divided the community, it may seem confusing how HN gold could possibly divide the community. Such features are inherently divisive (in this case "those who have gold vs those who don't.") Leaderboards are generally divisive; that's why they're marginalized and hidden behind the "lists" link at the bottom of the site. Etc.
We don't need to promote elitism to encourage better comments. We just need to encourage better comments.
Also, as a small critique specific to HN Gold itself: there's no way to prevent someone from gilding their own comments. (They can just use an alt account and a different credit card to get around any account-specific self-gilding restriction, for example.) Suffice to say, self-gilding would be detrimental to the commenting ecosystem here on HN.
We don't need to promote elitism to encourage better comments. We just need to encourage better comments.
Also, as a small critique specific to HN Gold itself: there's no way to prevent someone from gilding their own comments. (They can just use an alt account and a different credit card to get around any account-specific self-gilding restriction, for example.) Suffice to say, self-gilding would be detrimental to the commenting ecosystem here on HN.