[OGWhales]

I agree. Sites like Reddit, with visible comment voting, can quickly turn certain communities into echo chambers. Disagreement with the "hive mind" can be punishing, discouraging debate and encouraging the melding of opinions. Secondly, seeing how others voted influences others to vote the same, causing a snowball effect. I prefer hidden vote count and the inability to downvote someone. I believe this makes an important difference when a reader is determining their opinion about comments, even if the comments are still organized by highest vote.

All media has its flaws, and I still prefer to check forums for the greatest diversity of opinions. Strangely, I have noticed an unintuitive aspect of forums: smaller forums appear to have a greater diversity in opinion than larger ones.

[forgetfulusr]

I agree with the vote counting and I am curious, is there a forum which only shows comments after you have made a comment on the article itself? As long as empty comments and "this" aren't allowed, it can be a good filter for on topic, more organic discussion.