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I like the concept. What I would want to see is a clear path to reaching consensus documents.

Comments-upon-comments makes it hard to get an idea of what the overall consensus is. You pretty much need to read all of it and explore every comment thread to understand what are the generally agreed parts and what are the more controversial takes(?).

Maybe some hybrid between this and Wikipedia?

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You could maybe achieve that with this design if a summary could be set for resolved discussions and shown at a higher level (eg. when hovering over the source text of a thread).

Having the ability to differentiate between a resolved, useful thread and a resolved but ultimately unnecessary thread might also help avoid noise.

Yeah exactly, it would be interesting to see a concept where the center piece is a consensus document where you could hide/show sections that are more or less controversial. Instead of leaving comments you propose changes, sort of wiki style. But to facilitate a higher level of difference of opinion, changes should have some mechanism for validation against consensus. And controversial changes should not be discarded but instead folded away in a linked comment-like.

Then there also needs to be a mechanism for working towards succinctness.

Interesting, will explore more.

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