Like many Less Wrong readers, I greatly enjoy Slate Star Codex; there's a large overlap in readership. However, the comments there are far worse, not worth reading for me. I think this is in part due to the lack of LW-style up and downvotes. Have there ever been discussion threads about SSC posts here on LW? What do people think of the idea occasionally having them? Does Scott himself have any views on this, and would he be OK with it?
Update:
The latest from Scott:
I'm fine with anyone who wants reposting things for comments on LW, except for posts where I specifically say otherwise or tag them with "things i will regret writing"
In this thread some have also argued for not posting the most hot-button political writings.
Would anyone be up for doing this? Ataxerxes started with "Extremism in Thought Experiments is No Vice"
I don't read the comments on SSC mostly because of very, very poor comment section layout (because nesting comments just significantly narrows the width for every "child" comment), not because of comment quality. Besides, if I perceived SSC comments as rather poor in quality, it would be mostly because of the significantly larger contrast between them and the main blog post. (At least here in Discussion, it's rare when one LessWronger in the main post writes significantly better than the several top commenters, whereas on SSC, Scott is, well, Scott and everybody else is just everybody else.)
Besides, I don't find the addition of a up/down vote feature an improvement, rather the opposite, especially when it comes to the kinds of topics Scott touches upon. I often don't use my own up/down vote buttons because I often feel like "who the hell am I to judge?", particularly when I know I lack expertise in something. Other people, also without qualifications, may not be as scrupulous. While it does clutter up the comment section, agreement or disagreement expressed verbally, non-anonymously (because it psychologically weighs differently depending on the impressiveness of the person it comes from), and with justifications seems to me to help the overall quality of discussion.