Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tend to think online discussion systems will evolve to approximate real discussion. The online aspect is simply to allow easier information management, synchronization of more people (which would be physically impossible), and decrease of distance. Temporal issues aside, it makes pretty much sense, in that problems in real discussion easily predict problems in online discussion, and fixes to online discussion syste…
I disagree that we don't think in tiers in real life. We do - except they are called roles or titles. For instance, the typical university has undergraduate students, graduate students, professors and administrators. One could simply say that there are four tiers. The reason that we don't think of it this way is most of these institutions have grown up organically over time, or at the very least we aren't aware of th…
The examples you give about discussion are all "real discussion." What I'm saying is that I believe the ideal discussion system would accomodate all these discussions. Poetry, sports, academic journals, etc. If not now, eventually it must.
While sometimes it makes sense to nicheify, like separating a fashion-specific website from a tech-specific one, the material isn't always mutually exclusive, and so lots of information is lost. There should be channels for different discussions to connect to each other. Wikipedia is one example of how it can be done.
I guess arbitrarily-tiered system is a bad phrase. I just mean no explicit tiers, like, you have a bit set for mod status, a bit set for troll status, etc. Everybody will interpret authority, or hierarchy, differently, so just leave it as-is, at least with subjectively assessed content, like puns, politically incorrect jokes... Of course objective measurements are useful for winnowing things like necessarily true statements and necessarily informative statements, but not everything.
I think reddit has a pretty good model. So is Slashdot. They're both obvious improvements from BBS style discussions. But there's a lot more to explore, and this more should be where there is more flexibility. One example where this flexibility is lacking is in funny Slashdot comments. Some of the +5 Funny are great stuff, but I can't just, say, have a Slashdot Jokes section and only look at those (and add jokes to the jokes section). So there's seenonslash.com. But that's a reposting of slashdot comments; in effect, lots of information that could've been more effectively harnessed if the Slashdot system itself was more flexible.
Just my thoughts, but in general I don't like institutions and hierarchies and I'm biased against them. Of course it's insane to abolish all demarcations, but why not allow responsibilities to be expanded or dimished in small increments according to performance? It might take x percent of y to impeach someone in real life, but a virtual system would allow you to, say, have a bit less power if the populace thinks you should have less.
It'd be an interesting experiment if anything.