In keeping with the tone of your article: In parallel with your comments about commenting, this site as with all that is the Internet has a major issue with Indexing. "Resilience" is an interesting project building a "Link Library" for more see under Groups in sidebar-right.
          Building an intuitive navigational design is not in itself an intuitive process. UXDesigners are (or should be) well paid professionals specifically employed to inhance User Experience. This is way outside my area of expertise, so I only note that I know a good design when I experience it but often the subtleties are lost upon me.

community like this. Personally, I post specifically to get discussions going. Limiting who can comment, or how often...etc. just really discourages meaningful discussions.

The ONLY thing I think I could approve of is ~perhaps~ an ignore button. But then again, I AM an adult and can just ignore people and journals that I don't find productive on my own. Once the obnoxious ones are identified, they could just be collectively ignored, not "fed" as it were... Not acknowledged, not discussed...just pass over and excluded like they are not even there. IF they escalate, management has tools I am sure to remove them, eh?

of a commenter by donation level, time in c99p, #/day are all ways of setting up a class system. Having no thumbs-down, and having ups not ascribable to any person, is a way to balance, make it more egalitarian here. If there are few(er) recs to a comment, that would indicate that there is disagreement or disinterest. The site is still small enough that trolls should be smelled quickly, for now. Up to admin to handle those.

it's not our site and those that own it will make their decisions as they see fit. In that way it is like Daily Kos and most other blogs. It's really up to them. I guess that's just the nature of the beast.

Any comment or suggestion about the structure and administration of C99 will get a serious hearing. Now, when we've grown from 1642 members as I type to 16,000 or 160,000 somewhere down the road, the present responsiveness may start to be diluted. That's probably inevitable, but I think that's a "problem" most of us would welcome.

I am reading this. I'll stay out of the discussion and let everyone make their points. Just wanted to let you know that we are listening.

I posted a comment yesterday here touching a bit the question that I consider commenting more a privilege to have than a right. And I must say that was a long development from my side to get to this pov.

I like to kiss (keep it simple). It's, I guess, clear, that we all like and want to comment whatever comes to our mind, and we all take other people's comments differently (what -is one person's cool sarcastic or snarky to the point comment is another person's painful realization that he was not taken seriously, or being put down, or being misunderstood or being analyzed as something he/she thinks is not fair - mostly the subconscious racism accusations -). So all in all, comments are a painful pleasure we all are easily addicted to. That's why I think to be able to comment freely is a privilege and a right at the same time.

I consider the right and need to comment like the right and need for universal healthcare. Everybody should get it, have it and I have no problem to mandate that everybody pays into the pot to give everybody what all of us need.

So, yes to mandatory "fees" by all to provide a service that guarantees everybody's rights to free comments and writings.

I do not think that this is a tool to keep the trolls away. What is a troll anyway? Someone who pokes a joke, someone who loves to provocate, someone who spews hate? All of it is in the eyes of the beholder, most of the time. So, I believe to tame the so-called trolls is best done by feeling comfortable enough to tell the person, who you think trolls a diary or comment thread, in writing a comment about it to that person.

People feel they have to self-censor a lot to keep civil and get along with each other. That leads easily to feeling muzzled too much. If you pay your dues for a privilege to comment freely, you do feel more comfortable to speak your mind and not fall into self-censoring yourself to the point you have to swallow any shit someone throws at you.

Throw me a pie in the face and I throw an egg back into yours and we are even. That's the privilege to have and we would have to pay our dues for it, imo.

You are mandated to pay your SS taxes and that means you have a right to get your monthly social security checks when you need them. Same contract for the privilege and right to comment freely, imo.

on two different sites is blacklisting. One site that had nested comments (worked like a dream), one without (not as good, but still helped). I did it with a firefox plugin that I offered outside the site for that site, no support by the site itself.
The first site (with nested comments) had, it turned out, exactly two trolls. Their posts, plus the extended response subthreads to their posts, eventually accounted for half the comments on the site. Discussion had ground to a halt and everyone was frustrated. This was brought to the attention of the site administrators who, while loath to stifle free speech, were convinced to ban those two users. The site returned to normal, everyone was happy.
What is blacklisting? Each user gets a blacklist. They can add other users to their blacklist and the posts of those blacklisted users will not be visible to the owner of the blacklist, but are otherwise unaffected. Additionally, any comments nested below those users comments (even by users you like) will not be visible. The whole pissing match ceases to exist for you.
How is this different from downrating? The idea of downrating is that the community decides that someone's posts are unworthy and nobody should see them. Someone else determines what you should read. Whether that someone is the site admins or self-appointed hall monitors doesn't matter.
Blacklisting is each user deciding that someone is a jerk and choosing not to listen to them or the mudslinging matches they spawn.
There are professional trolls and amateur trolls. Both of them thrive on conflict and disruption. Here's the key: if nobody listens to them, they go away. The paid trolls don't get paid if they aren't successful at disrupting a site, and the amateurs don't get the thrill of tying the place up in knots.
The first response of the troll is to establish a second account which hasn't been blacklisted. They will get a few messages through, but you as a user will just see another troll (you don't care that it's the same user with a different ID) and blacklist them as well.
Instead of joining in a pointless argument, you just turn the whole thing off. That vastly reduces the number of comments made in response to troll posts, and the whole thing dies down.
I've never convinced a site to implement a blacklist feature, but I really think this is the solution to trolls.
BTW, trying to maintain a functioning blacklist plugin from outside is a lot of work, because it depends on scanning the html output by the site, which frequently changes format. Much easier to do on the server side.

For me, comments are the life-blood of a blog/site like this. Without them the site might wither. I don't want that. I mostly read, occasionally comment and have yet to write a diary (too much on my real-life plate for now).

I think the upvoting is nice and validating, if unnecessary, but it helps to keep it cohesive (I think).

In general here, in life, in economics I don't really believe that growth is always so important. I am more of a 'sustainability' person. I don't mean there should be no growth... there should be but the price has to be calculated/thought about... It's different for a blog than for the economy, but imho the economy is in shambles partly (partly) b/c we have fetishized rapid growth (financialized shit/ stock returns) at the expense of things that might be more important (even economically)... like sustainability.

I don't know what the goals are of the site owners/managers/whatever... so what I say means not-so-much.

Thing is this... with the rapid growth of DailyKos, the site became not just bloated but hostile and aggressive. I mean there was and is an edge to it that was very unfriendly. This site right now is the opposite and yet discussions are on going. Naked Capitalism (the other place I read) is different in that there's no rating system and users (commenters) reply to comments or to the main point of the thread. Of course there are no user-diaries as there are here.

Just my 2 centimes

Goes beyond "some trolls". Sure, there are some bad actors but when one of them is the site owner that's going to make problems. In addition, the very nature of the blog is partisan which, by definition, fights with the notion of being reality based. Reality is non-partisan. Finally, at some point some sort of social illness occurred wherein reality and truthfulness became secondary to primary partisanship. That isn't a problem with rules. It's a problem with people. The only thing we here need to do to stop that from happening is simply not buy into it. Whether or not something fits our comfortable narrative we must always ask ourselves, "Yes, but is it true?"

Take a look at the post up above by Big Al pondering whether he should post a diary about Sanders being an imperial pig. Sure, that may fight with many of our comfortable narratives but is it true? I think the only way to fight "talking points" is with a relentless attachment to reality from all of us. I don't think any voting system or moderation system can replace the preponderance of the community acting with good intent.