Perceval thanks and by the way an excellent essay. You hit the nail on the head with ... 'our hypothetical comment-driven forum would push stories up based on quality of conversation....'. Do you think that part of the formula can be improved by including automatically a 'readability formula', where the childish comments and language would automatically be penalized by the system?
It's supposed to identify formally stupid comments, i.e. those that have bad spelling and txt abbreviations, etc. It doesn't do anything about substantive stupidity, unfortunately ;)
