There's not a "right way" or "wrong way" to organize online forums. Different interaction models result in different types of conversations, and there's room f

There's not a "right way" or "wrong way" to organize online forums. Different interaction models result in different types of conversations, and there's room for variety there. In the case of small communities, I think it's actually beneficial to have a tool to rank order comments based on the perceived relevance to the collective. I would say that actually showing users vote numbers is probably counter-productive. It's probably too appealing to our primate brains to be able to assign precise values to social interactions, and I think we'll probably find out in time that gamified social media is in the category of things like sugar, slot machines and opiates which are just a net negative for many many people.