[ShredKazoo]

I think this problem is similar to fighting spam, or ranking webpages for search queries: you don't want to be too public with your methods, because any metric can be gamed.

I actually suspect "bridge-based ranking" has already been deployed on a large scale, and the group that did so has not publicly disclosed this -- likely for good reason. (There is a big social media site that used to be famous for having terrible comments. You fill in the rest...)

In any case, yes it is very exciting. Including from an epistemological point of view -- the idea of promoting arguments that actually change someone's mind is pretty cool (assuming the argument is sound and truthful).