[jmiskovic]

I really like your 'starring whole debate' mechanism, that seems like huge innovation.

The trend is to just reuse the standard up/down voting comments without realizing implications. Yes, if you do this and sort comments by votes you will on average get higher quality user-curated content. OTOH small piece of UI is using reward system to condition users to seek attention, and it sets the tone for whole discussion.

There are no easy solutions here. Everyone wants their opinion to be heard (even if somebody already expressed same thing). That will sometimes mean aligning your opinion to masses so that your content gets proper visibility, which leads to echo chambers and bubbles. Your take forces users to bring attention to all of debate and not just to one side's arguments. Clever.

[rodp]

Thank you for the positive feedback. That's pretty much where I'm coming from: "likes" have created an unhealthy dynamic in online conversations and I was wondering if there could be a hack around that.

[critiqjo]

I find the idea very interesting. But what if people leaning on one side of the argument stars a debate because the outcome ended up favoring their side?

[joshuahutt]

Makes me wonder if having votes trickle _up_ the thread that produced them would make for a useful experiment?