[rabidrat]

> Transitive, persistent reputation is key to solving this issue

Reddit/HN/etc make the username behind each comment as small and discreet as possible. As much as I dislike the low content/cruft ratio of BBForum, its design emphasizes each commenter's login, and registration date. This helps at least a bit, as even visitors can readily notice the correlation between certain avatars and the quality of their posts.

Whereas on Reddit and here, I even sometimes miss that the same account is just replying to a reply--i.e. just continuing the conversation. I think the aim is to judge comments by their content rather than the character who posts them, but context is always extremely relevant. It matters whether the poster is a Senator, a thought leader, or a habitual troll. And I often get too wrapped up in the content to dig for the source.

[wav-part]

This has much simpler solution: user tagging. I think Reddit Enhancement Suite has it. I am working on a C Reddit/HN client (basically RES on steroids) that would implement these user remebering features such as usertags, usersets, bad/good users, total_upvote/downvotes_given_to_a_user etc.