I fully agree that there is a tendency to oversimplify the way online discussions are sorted. This often leads to a system where the rich get richer and it is d

I fully agree that there is a tendency to oversimplify the way online discussions are sorted. This often leads to a system where the rich get richer and it is difficult for new comments to get their audience; is it even obvious what an up or down vote means? I am not sure, but it might help to have a multi-dimensional voting system so there is a possibility to agree/disagree with a comment without signaling bad quality. For the second part, I think that in such a case it should be possible to connect the question ("what do you think about docker?") to the overall topic even after it was created. The structure should be flexible in a sense that a topic can grow in all directions and can be referenced in multiple discussions.