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Hmm... Doesn't Slashdot sort of do this? Not completely, but to some extent, it does have "Flamebait" or "Interesting" or "Insightful" 'ratings' for comments.

I don't really think that's too useful, because it's usually pretty obvious what category the comment falls in after reading it anyway...

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Those kinds of tags are too broad. I was thinking of some javascript to let you highlight subparts of a comment then tag it with a more specific label, like "Straw Man Argument."

People would probably view the comment differently, but readers (and the author) could then see 60% of people thought part of his comment wasn't useful. Ad hominem and straw dog attacks, for example, might be unintentionally inserted in the heat of argument. Right now, comment rating is very blocky.

That's actually a very interesting thought. It might be hard to implement in a graphically pleasing manner though.

Startup idea!

Make it so you can tag arbitrary pages from within your browser, and other people visiting the page can see the tags if they wish. Imagine the fun of doing this with the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, in addition to blogs and discussion forums, etc. etc.

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