Just had an idea that may help the moderation AND encourage higher levels of discourse — comments are not published immediately. When I was doing peer reviews,

Just had an idea that may help the moderation AND encourage higher levels of discourse — comments are not published immediately. When I was doing peer reviews, it would often take a day or more to read a paper, think it through, and then write up something thoughtful and constructive. If you introduce a mechanism to delay comments (eg, holding all messages for 24-72 hours before publishing or only releasing new comments on Monday mornings) it would: - encourage commenters to write longer thoughtful responses rather than short quick comment threads - reduce back and forth flame wars - ease the burden on moderators and give them time to do batches of work - see if multiple commenters come to the same conclusions/critiques to minimize bandwagon effects