As an active poster in two online communities that use comment ratings (
Slashdot and
Kuro5hin, the latter being the original Scoop code site), I must say I am a little disappointed with how comment ratings have worked out on the site. I'm not disappointed in the system itself (which is essentially identical to K5), but rather the use of it.
It's as if the DailyKos community hasn't yet really made the transition from MovableType. The open threads are another example of this, with most people just posting their own bit like they would back under MT and not taking advantage of the threaded qualities of Scoop.
Now let me clearly state that my intention is not to troll: I wish to provide honest and open feedback based on my perceptions of the DailyKos community as compared to other communities. I don't claim to be perfect myself: I am guilty of many of the things I list here. Furthermore, I don't claim that these other communities are perfect: in fact, I'd say DailyKos is significantly better than both of the aforementioned communities in a number of ways (most notably far less trolling).
Regarding the threaded discussions in open threads, that's not that big of a deal. I mean, open threads will inevitably be a little disjointed, and I personally find them laborious to just sit and read through. Still, I often pagedown through them and occasionally things of interest catch my eye. So, I'm not really proposing any massive change in that area.
Regarding comment ratings, however, I do think that some change is in order (not that I or anyone else really has the power to enact such change, but I figure I'll make my suggestions anyway and if people agree then maybe something will happen). Comment ratings inevitably turn into a sort of game for many people: the numbers make you think that you're getting a score telling you how popular or smart you are or something. This happens anywhere there are comment ratings and is essentially inevitable.
But despite this drawback, I find comment ratings to be invaluable. When browsing Slashdot or Kuro5hin, the ratings let me quickly find good and interesting posts. The way I see it, not every good post is moderated up (some are in fact moderated down), but most all posts that are moderated up are at least decent.
So, what do I think the problem of comment rating is here at DailyKos? Well, two things mostly: firstly, they just aren't used enough. There are many active readers and commenters, but few people seem to dole out ratings. I don't rate all that many comments myself I must admit, but I'd wager that I've rated more than many out there (apparently 21 comments).
The second problem is many of the comments that are rated are done so in, well, a very political manner. While this may seem fitting for a political site, I feel it isn't a good thing when it comes to fostering discussion and promoting new and interesting ideas.
That, and the most commonly rated up comments I see (the few comments that receive a large number of 4 ratings) are, well, lemming calls. They're short one liners, like "yay Kos" or "ABB". Now while I and most all Kossacks agree with those sorts of sentiments, rating those up doesn't help at all. If anything, if this was Slashdot I'd moderate those down as redundant.
Anyway, all of this is just my opinion of course, and you're welcome to disagree. Post your own opinions in this thread, I promise I'll rate comments judiciously. ;)