> And they value engagement over content quality, which is the entire reason comment-tree/vote-based systems have been pushed heavily over web-1.0 threaded foru

> And they value engagement over content quality, which is the entire reason comment-tree/vote-based systems have been pushed heavily over web-1.0 threaded forum discussions as well. While they certainly do value engagement over quality, I suspect that the systems are put in place because they don't scale in terms of manpower, and they don't trust their users to do formalize the structure of the site.