Concision enthroned: How Yoomoot keeps discussions trim

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The problem: Online discussions contain many unnecessary posts
Online discussions are cluttered with extraneous information. There are posts which are just "me too" expressions of agreement, posts which make the same point as a previous post but from a slightly different angle, posts based entirely on misunderstandings and posts rewording previous posts in an attempt to rectify misunderstandings. It all adds up to make popular online discussions overwhelmingly enormous. In contrast, Yoomoot discussions have no more posts than needed.

Solution 1: Judgements
On Yoomoot, users can 'agree with', 'disagree with' or be 'unsure about' posts via a simple voting mechanism. This removes the clutter of 'me too' posts while retaining the value of knowing which posts have the most support. Curious users can see exactly who voted what and what version of the post they voted on.

Solution 2: Revision requests
If users are confused about what the author of a particular post is saying they can write a 'revision request' to the author, encouraging them to edit their post to make it clearer. This avoids cluttering discussions with expressions of confusion and the subsequent clarifications.

Solution 3: Co-authoring of posts
Often, discussions are littered with posts which make the same basic point, but give subtly different insights into the issue. Yoomoot encourages such additional insights to be added to existing posts, in order to avoid clutter. To facilitate this, we allow users to edit one another's posts. Authors can choose between making a specific post editable only to themselves and specifically invited users or (the default setting) making the post editable by any 'trusted user'. Moreover, trusted users are required to make edits only if they strengthen the arguments made in the posts. Opposing arguments must be made as separate posts.

Solution 4: Merging of similar bookmarks
'Bookmarks' (basically links to recommended sites) are always editable by all trusted users. Users are encouraged to group similar links into a single bookmark, either manually or via the 'merge' button. This helps fight a common problem encountered on other social bookmarking sites: multiple links to different versions of the same story. This solution is not fully implemented yet.