[jrowen]

I agree that the voting can feel icky. It's just too low-content and ambiguous to be that useful of a signal. I think number of replies would be a better signal, but it's also easy to post something inflammatory and get a ton of knee-jerk replies. Though maybe under a reply-based scoring system people would learn to just let those comments die.

With regards to your second paragraph, I think the problem is that most real, meaty discussions are not a simple matter of factual right and wrong. If it really is that cut-and-dried then there's usually not much conversation to be had. When it comes to a lot of interesting discussions there's always going to be opinions and perspectives and feelings involved. Respecting that will get people to open up more and put more effort into explaining their point of view, and will result in less defensiveness and people trying to "own" each other. It feels good to do a big show of rhetoric and really drive your point home but it's almost always detrimental to reaching a shared understanding.