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The "next big thing" won't have voting. It's too easily gamed and leads to groupthink in the worst way.

Inb4 "HN has voting but no groupthink". It has both in large quantities.

I've always had the idea for a comment system where you can only down vote with a comment on why, and that comments down vote power depends on its votes.

Interesting idea, but right now this is just a self-hosted instance of Reddit, is it not? How do you plan to develop the idea further and (most importantly) attract actual visitors/users?

voat.co is already a good alternative.

If you don't mind digging through blatant racism.

The problem with starting a community made of the banned members of another

C# based and struggling to keep up with load, last I saw