We could test this theory by using it on the existing data and selecting the best comments under this theory. I would be interested in reading the "top 20 (or 50) LW comments ever" found by this algorithm, posted as a separate article. It could give us an approximate idea of what exactly the new system would incentiize.
Is there a good canonical source for all LW comments ever? I'm interested in importing the data into Python and playing around with ranking algorithms. (I'm not sure what disclaimer to use to keep others from not doing the same just because I publicly said that I'm interested in it, but yeah, feel free to duplicate work and come up with other interesting analyses)
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.