[rrobukef]

Interesting. However, any manual action (choosing trusted posters, maintained database) is bad for adoption. Facebook and twitter take care of it, you should too.

Perhaps you should use karma and comment interactions to automatically attest the people you interact with. Add a "report" button to disavow certain users. Now there is a positive and negative feedback loop to reduce the workload of attestation.

Caveat: attestation must be stabilized. The existing hierarchies of admin/(super-)moderator work well as trusted posters. On the other hand, picking and choosing your moderator(s) is interesting and will birth new flame-wars and division.

Caveat (2): Adding more crypto explodes the amount of data which must be handled. Especially when every comment and upvote is signed.