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1. Each thought is expressed in an isolated node.
2. Others may express similar thoughts. Nodes that are duplicates of others would simply be pointed to the original node and marked as duplicate. Superior expressions of an idea by way of votes are displayed while duplicates are collapsed and hidden.
3. Nodes which are counterpoints would be marked as such and pointed to the opposing idea. As an alternative, another structure could be pros and cons where thoughts could be further supported/opposed.

The main idea I'm making is that the format should be focused on optimizing discussions for reads even if that demands a bit of work. Online content has a long shelf life. It's going to be read far more than its going to be updated. Because of the dynamic nature of open-ended discourse, I see no better alternative for supporting it than some method of curation and aggregation. That is, shift the map/reduce from the reader to the system infrastructure.

1. Each thought is expressed in an isolated node.
2. Others may express similar thoughts. Nodes that are duplicates of others would simply be pointed to the original node and marked as duplicate. Superior expressions of an idea by way of votes are displayed while duplicates are collapsed and hidden.
3. Nodes could be supported/opposed by others nodes. Doing so would be a matter of pointing one node at another an marking that relationship as pro or con.

The main idea I'm making is that the format should be focused on optimizing discussions for reads even if that demands a bit of work. Online content has a long shelf life. It's going to be read far more than its going to be updated. Because of the dynamic nature of open-ended discourse, I see no better alternative for supporting it than some method of curation and aggregation. Shift the map/reduce from the reader to the system infrastructure.

The main idea I'm making is that the format should be focused on optimizing discussions for reads even if that demands a bit of work. Online content has a long shelf life. It's going to be read far more than its going to be updated.

The main idea I'm making is that the format should be focused on optimizing discussions for reads even if that demands a bit of work. Online content has a long shelf life. It's going to be read far more than its going to be updated. Because of the dynamic nature of open-ended discourse, I see no better alternative for supporting it than some method of curation and aggregation. That is, shift the map/reduce from the reader to the system infrastructure.

Imagine if the format for a subjective exchange periodically consolidated the discourse. That is, take the points and counterpoints and organize them; weed out the cruft. Essentially, distill the discourse to its bare essence to reduce the overhead associated with reads. And in doing so attempt to keep each individual idea isolated just as answers on SO are isolated entities. By keeping thoughts isolated it allows them to be dealt with individually (up/down votes, etc.); it's impossible to properly deal with compound items.

While this is perhaps not fully baked, it feels sufficient as a starting point for subjective discourse. It's not that complicated. It supports nodes (isolated replies) exactly as SO does. The part that varies is that nodes can be tagged as duplicate, pro and con. In the same manner, when a thread itself is marked as a duplicate of another the two can be merged (SO supports merging I believe).

Over time as ideas develop and things change one might notice different ideas floating up while others drop down. What I'm saying, is that this model would essentially support an axis of change over time. To better do so, up/down votes could support a rate of decay. That is, newer up/down votes would carry slightly more weight. There are of course other things that might go into weighting replies. Figuring this out won't be easy.

Imagine if the format for a subjective exchange periodically consolidated the discourse. That is, take the points and counterpoints and organize them; weed out the cruft. (Consider how adept writers rewrite and prune their prose.) Essentially, distill the discourse to its bare essence to reduce the overhead associated with reads. And in doing so attempt to keep each individual idea isolated just as answers on SO are isolated entities. By keeping thoughts isolated it allows them to be dealt with individually (up/down votes, etc.); this is imperative as it's impossible to properly deal with compound items.

While this is perhaps not fully baked, it feels sufficient as a starting point for subjective discourse. It's not that complicated. It supports nodes (isolated replies) exactly as SO does. The part that varies is that nodes can be tagged as duplicate, pro and con and directed toward other nodes. In the same manner, when a thread itself is marked as a duplicate of another the two can be merged (SO supports merging I believe).

Over time as ideas develop and things change one might notice different ideas floating up while others drop down. What I'm saying is that this model would essentially support an axis of change over time. To better do so, up/down votes could support a rate of decay. That is, newer up/down votes would carry slightly more weight. There are of course other things that might go into weighting replies. Figuring this out won't be easy.