Unfortunately, Steve, there is no simple way to make democracy less democratic;
by definition the majority view always pushes out the minority. With Richard's
logarithms system, the majority would still always push out the majority, but
it would look close :) With ranking a post, it is easy to game by always giving
out the top or bottom rank, or give out the highest and lowest values as much
as possible.
There are complex ways, to limit the power of democracy, but they are complex.
For example, the election for the Doge of Venice, which I was reading about
this week
http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-28R1.html
linked from Schneier on Security
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/07/security_analys_1.html
I would rather allow the UI to highlight the user's social role (guest speaker,
participation coach) than have a voting system. Readers can then give weight to
the user's post accordingly. Posters can already state that the agree or
disagree with a poster, and do so quite readily (here and in the Canterbury
Issues Forum, at least).
