US will survive this, I never said it wont, but the standard of living will be diminished severely, as Chinese consume more and more of what they produce, their currency strengthens and the rest of the world is left without all those cheap products (until they are forced into saving and rebuilding their manufacturing themselves.)
- the trade deficit with China and other countries shows one thing: USA is not manufacturing much of anything except bailouts for banks and aircraft carriers.
The trade deficit of 50 billion with only China means that the products that are imported into US are absolutely not manufactured in USA, as it is impossible for a US based company to compete with Chinese manufacturer due to the rules and regulations and taxes and subsidies and monopolies and inflation by money printing, all the problems, all of which are created by USA government.
Well, we discovered how the government exaggerated the Soviets' abilities...
- US government was heavily invested in constantly overestimating Soviet military ability on purpose, to keep the military industrial complex going.
What do you think the US government is overestimating and underestimating now? Well, now it's the inflation levels (waaaay underestimated), production levels (waaaay overestimated), unemployment levels (waaaaay underestimated), etc.
I don't think you're aware of what the Americans are capable of.. unless you have some kind of security clearance we don't know about.
- on Chinese (and other country's) dime, USA has the biggest military and offensive force. Much good will it do for US to wave that dick around. In today's world major countries do not attack each other in land wars directly, they have nuclear weapons for that. Everything else is irrelevant.
However, are you implying USA would attack China if it stopped buying US debt?:) Well, hey, maybe that's possible. Not that it would help and not that Chinese would buy more US debt because of such an attack.
And if you want to talk about trade deficits, that just means we buy more crap from other countries than we export.
- no. It means USA is not producing ANY of those things it buys from foreign countries, because it is clearly impossible to compete for US internal manufacturers due to heavy government regulations, taxation, various laws and inflation of investment capital and high labor costs.
Whatever there is WalMart, if it's made in China, you won't find an equivalent made in USA anymore.
Having a large trade deficit with China simply means they depend on us to buy their crap.
- what a stupid statement. CHINA does not depend on you buying anything. CHINA should let their currency rise, so that Chinese people can finally start buying all those things, that are outflowing to other countries.
A few protectionist laws (they don't even have to be as severe as China's protectionist laws) and China goes bye-bye.
- A few protectionist laws, and you won't be able to buy anything, as prices will outmatch your purchasing ability completely.
I heard all of this same crap back in the 80's with Japan "dog".
- yes, Japan. What a disaster. They followed Greenspan's and Bernanke's advicse and devalued their currency and caused huge inflation, which offset the huge deflation they were having, so the prices there didn't really move much, while they should have fallen dramatically, as Japanese Yen is constantly outperforming US dollar, even with the earthquakes and tsunamis and nuclear disasters combined.
utter domination to merely being major players in aerospace, heavy construction, and especially weapons.
- I grant you weapons. But aerospace and heavy construction?
Boeing is heavily subsidized and helped via political power by US government, it's not standing firmly on the ground with both feet, and heavy construction is done around the world. Maybe you didn't notice, but China actually builds rail roads, skyscrapers, bridges, roads, tunnels... As to weapons - yes. As long as USA has Chinese footing the bill that is.
ha ha ha is right. China is not paying for our military.
- no? 40% of US gov't spending comes out of foreign debt.
The U.S.'s economy is still MUCH larger than China.
- really? Is that what the 50 billion/month trade deficit with China telling you? That, and all the money Fed prints monthly to buy 30% of all new debt that the US Treasury is issuing?
The U.S. still manufacturers more than China and unlike China, manufacturing is a very small part of the U.S. economy.
- again, trade deficit is 50 billion. US economy is not manufacturing anything, it's assembling parts made in other places. US even has trade deficit with CANADA, forget China.
As far as the bonds, the U.S. could make those almost worthless in seconds crushing China.
- what are you talking about, dog? US bonds ARE worthless today. Nobody can sell them without crashing them. Bill Gross sold 150 billion with a loss, he was the largest private holder, he got rid of 100% of his holdings. The only entities buying are foreign national banks and US Fed.
A few protectionist laws and they're done too.
- Yeah, too bad USA doesn't actually manufacture anything inside the country anymore. When was the last time you bought a pair of socks made in USA? Do you like having socks?
China is rising, but they are still a leach economy to the U.S.
- well, if your definition of 'leach' includes: provides the money AND the products for US consumers, then China is the biggest leach.
To indicate they own us is simply without merit. * *
- they don't own you, they just own everything you consume.
And the Chinese economy would collapse as the $1.4 trillion of US debt that China currently holds would quickly become worthless. Sort of like ripping off the nose to spite the face.
- what a huge misunderstanding of economics, that the education systems of the West have perpetrated upon their population. Very sad.
Chinese economy is not about the cash, the money. Chinese economy is an actual real economy - producing economy.
You see, when the Keynesian gods tell you that economy is about consumption, they are full of it, completely wrong. Consumption is a trivial consequence of production. If nothing is produced, nothing will be consumed. Production IS economy.
When USA borrowed money in 19 century, it borrowed the money to build factories and infrastructure, and when it used the money to build, it started producing, and the products it built were then sold to pay off the debts. Today, when USA borrows money, it only uses the money to consume, and it consumes foreign made products.
Irony is of-course that it borrows money from China and buys the Chinese made products, and the population of USA is convinced by their useless 'economists', who are really charlatans, that the US consumer is the actual engine behind this entire economic activity.
No. What China needs to do is to let their currency appreciate, so that it becomes cheaper for Chinese to both: buy raw materials (as they are hit hard with price inflation, which in the case of producers follows immediately after the self inflicted money inflation) and it becomes cheaper for the Chinese to buy foreign products and their own manufactured products as well, and China has plenty of potential for consumption, they do have over a billion people after all.
What is funny, is how Geithner calls China to let their currency appreciate, and it looks like he is just trying to play reverse psychology game (if he understands anything about economics at all), because either US dollar can be strong or Chinese currency can be strong, but they both cannot be strong at the same time.
If China lets the currency appreciate, it will become nearly impossible for the US consumers to buy Chinese products. That's good for USA in the long run, because USA has to be hit with very high interest rates on their money, Americans need to start saving and creating capital that can be applied for building things again, so that it starts producing again. But in the short term it's going to be disastrous for USA, not for China.
Sure, China will lose that debt. But it's going to lose that debt ANYWAY!
Do you think USA can pay that debt back? EVER?:)
USA doesn't produce anything of any value except for the raw materials, that Chinese would want to buy. USA can NEVER pay the debts back. These particular debts need to be restructured, but instead US Fed will keep printing, and all that useless paper, that ends up in Chinese banks, and causes the Chinese to print their currency as well only is hurting China right now.
USA has it great as long as other countries keep buying its debt and keep printing their own currencies into oblivion and keep price inflation inside their own economies and don't export it back to US.
However this will stop. Sure, many manufacturers in China and other exporting nations will cry murder, but they will have to deal with this, as their own currencies appreciate, they will start selling in the country rather than exporting so much. There will be some pain for China as well, but they have the production - which is what matters.
Do not be mistaken - US debts will never be repaid in anything that's valuable. US can print the dollar and 'repay' in worthless paper, but that's just as much of a default as a real bankruptcy would be.
Yeah, if China was actually interested in hurting USA in one place, it would really hit hard, they'd just stop buying US bonds and also stop rolling over the ones they have already, and never mind NASA, US wouldn't even have money to run its military.
Like in everything else, from economics, to love life (whatever it means for different people), there needs to be competition in software development. This means performance based compensation, this also means getting rid of those, who cannot achieve.
Developers should get goals in terms of business questions, then they should be let to do their own estimates and they should 'bid' on projects. There should be tracking of the success of different projects - from accuracy of estimate time and cost to number of features, to number of bugs per unit of time, to overall user satisfaction, to amount of time it takes to fix a bug or add a feature (this really would measure complexity and cleanliness of the code), to the average amount of time it takes the support team to deal with user issues (cleanness and usefulness of documentation.)
It is possible to do this, of-course large organizations rarely if ever achieve this level of 'enlightenment' even to start thinking about things this way, that's mostly because people do not understand economics, it's not about software.
I have an idea! How about they take a small 2 stroke engine and add it to the thing. Also a closed cockpit would be nice. Make the vehicle a bit more compact, maybe 1/4 of the size and then we can start having a conversation about something that's useful.
Police: Are you classified as human? Korben Dallas: Negative, I am a meat popsicle. --
Seriously though, you do what you have to do. In Hong Kong you have to live in tight space unless you are a billionaire basically, other places you can have miles and miles of open space to yourself.
It's not about 'eco' anything for this guy, it's about space efficiency because he has no choice.
By the way, in HK he can become rich selling his solutions.
Money is a social construct, which exists by consent.
- money exists out of necessity, the consent is secondary (and often it is not even there to begin with, as it is the case with legal tender, which is fiat and is destroyed by government printing, who destroy it and still claim that it is illegal not to accept this fiat).
Money is not just an abstract idea, people are not spirits, we are physical beings, and so we need things - food, clothing, shelter, energy, medical attention, sanitation, etc. That's comes first, then you need things like entertainment, place to go rest and such.
You also need transportation, haircuts, and various discretionary stuff.
So when you say: "money is a social construct", do not forget that it is first of all a way to get products/services that you need (firstly to survive and then a little more than that.) So it's not true that money itself has no value, it's just what passes for money may have no value at all.
Anything can pass for money - some things are real (like food or oil or metals) and some things are not real (like fiat paper or US T-Bills for instance.)
only as long as we stand by and allow money to buy anything can it in fact buy anything.
- this is only true for fiat. For actual things - you either have them or you do not, and if you really need them (like if you need some medication that is vital to you living or dying) - then it's not about your consent at all, is it?
The only question that needs to be asked: are both parties agreeing on the exchange or not? That's all there is to it - 2 parties, both are offering something for exchange and both have to agree on it.
The correct way of building a site like this is to make sure that the moderation system is web3 compliant, which means that every new user has to go through the strict Natalie Portman filter, where she looks at the picture of the user and those, who she finds acceptable are allowed to join. Those, who she finds attractive are allowed special privileges on the site, they can talk about pouring hot grits down her pants, and some, who are especially lucky, she meets in person, they become the moderators. Of-course those of us, with the biggest heads are forced into compulsory sexual relations with her, and the rest of the users must obey them, including the moderators. This will keep the club tight and exclusive and very intelligent, obviously.
How come after year, I mean it's been more than a decade for me here for sure (if I remember right), how come after all these years this site hasn't figured out the simple things about comment threads?
COMMENT THREADS!
Look at this fiasco - that's a comment about somebody leaving yet another comment in that thread, and quite a number of comments there are the same, redundant stuff, and why?
(Account, Discussions, Classic Discussion System (D1)) and (Options, Simple Design)
but a story on/. about a better design for comments threads - now that's irony.
So to the question:
How would you preserve the context of online discussions and stamp out trolls?
- I will say: forget trolls. Get the basics working and don't screw it up first of all - let the people SEE what the thread is first of all. Don't hide comments in threads by default.
As to trolls, etc: have simple "like/don't like" and have thresholds, nothing else should really be done. You can't get rid of trolls, and look what/. is doing and don't do it.
Do NOT force people to log out and post as ACs if they rich some weird 'threshold' (number of comments they can leave under their user name per 24 hours) - what good does that do? People register other accounts or they post as ACs. This is NOT good for discussions.
Do you have a discussion forum or is it a chat room (IRC like)? I think that's the first and only really important question. Do you want to keep history of all the comments or not?
Here is what/. is really doing that's pretty stupid: not showing the entire history of comments for non-AC users. As stories age, they disappear, contexts disappear. What's the point of having any history on line if it's uselessly unsearchable? There is no index.
There is no way really to link to an older discussion that maybe of some value.
Also for various political reasons on this site, comments are often moderated high up, and then after a while they are moderated down only so that people wouldn't be noticing them, even if they are totally pertinent to discussion, no trolling, no flame, those are just unpopular views and a coordinated moderation attack pushes them down where nobody is reading.
Don't allow political dissent to be drowned on your site by shills and just by those who don't like what you have to say. Have the "like/don't lie" feature - that's useful. All this other nonsense is just counterproductive if you don't want to run a site, that's dominated by one single mindset.
Slashdot Mirror
One Very important point you missed, is the US is the "saudi arabia" of food.
- only because it's subsidized... guess with whose money at this point?
Standard of living, standard of living.
US will survive this, I never said it wont, but the standard of living will be diminished severely, as Chinese consume more and more of what they produce, their currency strengthens and the rest of the world is left without all those cheap products (until they are forced into saving and rebuilding their manufacturing themselves.)
Trade and production are two different things...
- the trade deficit with China and other countries shows one thing: USA is not manufacturing much of anything except bailouts for banks and aircraft carriers.
The trade deficit of 50 billion with only China means that the products that are imported into US are absolutely not manufactured in USA, as it is impossible for a US based company to compete with Chinese manufacturer due to the rules and regulations and taxes and subsidies and monopolies and inflation by money printing, all the problems, all of which are created by USA government.
Well, we discovered how the government exaggerated the Soviets' abilities...
- US government was heavily invested in constantly overestimating Soviet military ability on purpose, to keep the military industrial complex going.
What do you think the US government is overestimating and underestimating now? Well, now it's the inflation levels (waaaay underestimated), production levels (waaaay overestimated), unemployment levels (waaaaay underestimated), etc.
I don't think you're aware of what the Americans are capable of.. unless you have some kind of security clearance we don't know about.
- on Chinese (and other country's) dime, USA has the biggest military and offensive force. Much good will it do for US to wave that dick around. In today's world major countries do not attack each other in land wars directly, they have nuclear weapons for that. Everything else is irrelevant.
However, are you implying USA would attack China if it stopped buying US debt? :) Well, hey, maybe that's possible. Not that it would help and not that Chinese would buy more US debt because of such an attack.
And if you want to talk about trade deficits, that just means we buy more crap from other countries than we export.
- no. It means USA is not producing ANY of those things it buys from foreign countries, because it is clearly impossible to compete for US internal manufacturers due to heavy government regulations, taxation, various laws and inflation of investment capital and high labor costs.
Whatever there is WalMart, if it's made in China, you won't find an equivalent made in USA anymore.
Having a large trade deficit with China simply means they depend on us to buy their crap.
- what a stupid statement. CHINA does not depend on you buying anything. CHINA should let their currency rise, so that Chinese people can finally start buying all those things, that are outflowing to other countries.
A few protectionist laws (they don't even have to be as severe as China's protectionist laws) and China goes bye-bye.
- A few protectionist laws, and you won't be able to buy anything, as prices will outmatch your purchasing ability completely.
I heard all of this same crap back in the 80's with Japan "dog".
- yes, Japan. What a disaster. They followed Greenspan's and Bernanke's advicse and devalued their currency and caused huge inflation, which offset the huge deflation they were having, so the prices there didn't really move much, while they should have fallen dramatically, as Japanese Yen is constantly outperforming US dollar, even with the earthquakes and tsunamis and nuclear disasters combined.
Doubt it. Who is the manufacturer? There was a story on 60 minutes last year - they couldn't find American made socks, and some AC on /. did?
utter domination to merely being major players in aerospace, heavy construction, and especially weapons.
- I grant you weapons. But aerospace and heavy construction?
Boeing is heavily subsidized and helped via political power by US government, it's not standing firmly on the ground with both feet, and heavy construction is done around the world. Maybe you didn't notice, but China actually builds rail roads, skyscrapers, bridges, roads, tunnels... As to weapons - yes. As long as USA has Chinese footing the bill that is.
What do you think the Chinese would do with all of that "production" if they couldn't sell it overseas?
- oh, oh, can I, can I?
They will consume the stuff they produce themselves, because they have over a fifth of the planet's human population.
I'd like to see how well an economy works when nobody buys anything it's producing.
- yeah, because people are spirits and they are not physical beings who actually need real physical things to survive.
This story is useless without the actual source code attached to it.
ha ha ha is right. China is not paying for our military.
- no? 40% of US gov't spending comes out of foreign debt.
The U.S.'s economy is still MUCH larger than China.
- really? Is that what the 50 billion/month trade deficit with China telling you? That, and all the money Fed prints monthly to buy 30% of all new debt that the US Treasury is issuing?
The U.S. still manufacturers more than China and unlike China, manufacturing is a very small part of the U.S. economy.
- again, trade deficit is 50 billion. US economy is not manufacturing anything, it's assembling parts made in other places. US even has trade deficit with CANADA, forget China.
As far as the bonds, the U.S. could make those almost worthless in seconds crushing China.
- what are you talking about, dog? US bonds ARE worthless today. Nobody can sell them without crashing them. Bill Gross sold 150 billion with a loss, he was the largest private holder, he got rid of 100% of his holdings. The only entities buying are foreign national banks and US Fed.
A few protectionist laws and they're done too.
- Yeah, too bad USA doesn't actually manufacture anything inside the country anymore. When was the last time you bought a pair of socks made in USA? Do you like having socks?
China is rising, but they are still a leach economy to the U.S.
- well, if your definition of 'leach' includes: provides the money AND the products for US consumers, then China is the biggest leach.
To indicate they own us is simply without merit. * *
- they don't own you, they just own everything you consume.
And the Chinese economy would collapse as the $1.4 trillion of US debt that China currently holds would quickly become worthless. Sort of like ripping off the nose to spite the face.
- what a huge misunderstanding of economics, that the education systems of the West have perpetrated upon their population. Very sad.
Chinese economy is not about the cash, the money. Chinese economy is an actual real economy - producing economy.
You see, when the Keynesian gods tell you that economy is about consumption, they are full of it, completely wrong. Consumption is a trivial consequence of production. If nothing is produced, nothing will be consumed. Production IS economy.
When USA borrowed money in 19 century, it borrowed the money to build factories and infrastructure, and when it used the money to build, it started producing, and the products it built were then sold to pay off the debts. Today, when USA borrows money, it only uses the money to consume, and it consumes foreign made products.
Irony is of-course that it borrows money from China and buys the Chinese made products, and the population of USA is convinced by their useless 'economists', who are really charlatans, that the US consumer is the actual engine behind this entire economic activity.
No. What China needs to do is to let their currency appreciate, so that it becomes cheaper for Chinese to both: buy raw materials (as they are hit hard with price inflation, which in the case of producers follows immediately after the self inflicted money inflation) and it becomes cheaper for the Chinese to buy foreign products and their own manufactured products as well, and China has plenty of potential for consumption, they do have over a billion people after all.
What is funny, is how Geithner calls China to let their currency appreciate, and it looks like he is just trying to play reverse psychology game (if he understands anything about economics at all), because either US dollar can be strong or Chinese currency can be strong, but they both cannot be strong at the same time.
If China lets the currency appreciate, it will become nearly impossible for the US consumers to buy Chinese products. That's good for USA in the long run, because USA has to be hit with very high interest rates on their money, Americans need to start saving and creating capital that can be applied for building things again, so that it starts producing again. But in the short term it's going to be disastrous for USA, not for China.
Sure, China will lose that debt. But it's going to lose that debt ANYWAY!
Do you think USA can pay that debt back? EVER? :)
USA doesn't produce anything of any value except for the raw materials, that Chinese would want to buy. USA can NEVER pay the debts back. These particular debts need to be restructured, but instead US Fed will keep printing, and all that useless paper, that ends up in Chinese banks, and causes the Chinese to print their currency as well only is hurting China right now.
USA has it great as long as other countries keep buying its debt and keep printing their own currencies into oblivion and keep price inflation inside their own economies and don't export it back to US.
However this will stop. Sure, many manufacturers in China and other exporting nations will cry murder, but they will have to deal with this, as their own currencies appreciate, they will start selling in the country rather than exporting so much. There will be some pain for China as well, but they have the production - which is what matters.
Do not be mistaken - US debts will never be repaid in anything that's valuable. US can print the dollar and 'repay' in worthless paper, but that's just as much of a default as a real bankruptcy would be.
Yeah, if China was actually interested in hurting USA in one place, it would really hit hard, they'd just stop buying US bonds and also stop rolling over the ones they have already, and never mind NASA, US wouldn't even have money to run its military.
Like in everything else, from economics, to love life (whatever it means for different people), there needs to be competition in software development. This means performance based compensation, this also means getting rid of those, who cannot achieve.
Developers should get goals in terms of business questions, then they should be let to do their own estimates and they should 'bid' on projects. There should be tracking of the success of different projects - from accuracy of estimate time and cost to number of features, to number of bugs per unit of time, to overall user satisfaction, to amount of time it takes to fix a bug or add a feature (this really would measure complexity and cleanliness of the code), to the average amount of time it takes the support team to deal with user issues (cleanness and usefulness of documentation.)
It is possible to do this, of-course large organizations rarely if ever achieve this level of 'enlightenment' even to start thinking about things this way, that's mostly because people do not understand economics, it's not about software.
your comment is mostly wrong.
Only about 2% of programmers in a large company actually do most of the real work.
20% are good for chit chat.
78% should be fired immediately.
The only spot you will find flat water surfaces is on lakes (which accounts for about 10% of global water surface).
- I think you WAY overestimate the amount of non-ocean water on this planet.
I mean something like this.
No, more like so, except the for the "do something because it's hard and not easy" part.
I have an idea! How about they take a small 2 stroke engine and add it to the thing. Also a closed cockpit would be nice. Make the vehicle a bit more compact, maybe 1/4 of the size and then we can start having a conversation about something that's useful.
Police: Are you classified as human?
Korben Dallas: Negative, I am a meat popsicle.
--
Seriously though, you do what you have to do. In Hong Kong you have to live in tight space unless you are a billionaire basically, other places you can have miles and miles of open space to yourself.
It's not about 'eco' anything for this guy, it's about space efficiency because he has no choice.
By the way, in HK he can become rich selling his solutions.
Now Microsoft needs to buy Apple (and later Ebay) and that's it, the quest for domination will be complete.
Money is a social construct, which exists by consent.
- money exists out of necessity, the consent is secondary (and often it is not even there to begin with, as it is the case with legal tender, which is fiat and is destroyed by government printing, who destroy it and still claim that it is illegal not to accept this fiat).
Money is not just an abstract idea, people are not spirits, we are physical beings, and so we need things - food, clothing, shelter, energy, medical attention, sanitation, etc. That's comes first, then you need things like entertainment, place to go rest and such.
You also need transportation, haircuts, and various discretionary stuff.
So when you say: "money is a social construct", do not forget that it is first of all a way to get products/services that you need (firstly to survive and then a little more than that.) So it's not true that money itself has no value, it's just what passes for money may have no value at all.
Anything can pass for money - some things are real (like food or oil or metals) and some things are not real (like fiat paper or US T-Bills for instance.)
only as long as we stand by and allow money to buy anything can it in fact buy anything.
- this is only true for fiat. For actual things - you either have them or you do not, and if you really need them (like if you need some medication that is vital to you living or dying) - then it's not about your consent at all, is it?
The only question that needs to be asked: are both parties agreeing on the exchange or not? That's all there is to it - 2 parties, both are offering something for exchange and both have to agree on it.
inertia.
The correct way of building a site like this is to make sure that the moderation system is web3 compliant, which means that every new user has to go through the strict Natalie Portman filter, where she looks at the picture of the user and those, who she finds acceptable are allowed to join. Those, who she finds attractive are allowed special privileges on the site, they can talk about pouring hot grits down her pants, and some, who are especially lucky, she meets in person, they become the moderators. Of-course those of us, with the biggest heads are forced into compulsory sexual relations with her, and the rest of the users must obey them, including the moderators. This will keep the club tight and exclusive and very intelligent, obviously.
Question: what goes after the kilometer?
Let's ask /. this question:
How come after year, I mean it's been more than a decade for me here for sure (if I remember right), how come after all these years this site hasn't figured out the simple things about comment threads?
COMMENT THREADS!
Look at this fiasco - that's a comment about somebody leaving yet another comment in that thread, and quite a number of comments there are the same, redundant stuff, and why?
Because /. can't do comments threads right.
Of-course you can disable this crap on /.
(Account, Discussions, Classic Discussion System (D1))
and
(Options, Simple Design)
but a story on /. about a better design for comments threads - now that's irony.
So to the question:
How would you preserve the context of online discussions and stamp out trolls?
- I will say: forget trolls. Get the basics working and don't screw it up first of all - let the people SEE what the thread is first of all. Don't hide comments in threads by default.
As to trolls, etc: have simple "like/don't like" and have thresholds, nothing else should really be done. You can't get rid of trolls, and look what /. is doing and don't do it.
Do NOT force people to log out and post as ACs if they rich some weird 'threshold' (number of comments they can leave under their user name per 24 hours) - what good does that do? People register other accounts or they post as ACs. This is NOT good for discussions.
Do you have a discussion forum or is it a chat room (IRC like)? I think that's the first and only really important question. Do you want to keep history of all the comments or not?
Here is what /. is really doing that's pretty stupid: not showing the entire history of comments for non-AC users. As stories age, they disappear, contexts disappear. What's the point of having any history on line if it's uselessly unsearchable? There is no index.
There is no way really to link to an older discussion that maybe of some value.
Also for various political reasons on this site, comments are often moderated high up, and then after a while they are moderated down only so that people wouldn't be noticing them, even if they are totally pertinent to discussion, no trolling, no flame, those are just unpopular views and a coordinated moderation attack pushes them down where nobody is reading.
Don't allow political dissent to be drowned on your site by shills and just by those who don't like what you have to say. Have the "like/don't lie" feature - that's useful. All this other nonsense is just counterproductive if you don't want to run a site, that's dominated by one single mindset.