I have often thought about methods of optimizing communication. Mainly forums and blogs since IRL is harder. My current interest is Karma systems. For instance I think it would be interesting to have 3 numbers. Positive, negative, neutral. The goal of neutral is mainly to handle small ups or downs, mainly downs. For instance if 1 person marks up, 40 mark neutral, and 3 mark down, you would less likely to focus on the negatives. Is your net score is negative 2 but neutral is 40, perhaps you merely pissed off reactionaries or feminists or some other group who is more motivated to throw down negatives or positives. I know I saw some people discussing what to do if you think a post is being unfairly downvoted but don't think it deserves and upvote.

This particular idea may not end up being supported by evidence as useful but I think its useful to think about such things even if you can't come up with a practically superior solution.

One argument against the above method is effort. Will people bother with it. This is probably the most common complaint, that more effective, assuming they are, methods will also require more effort.