It was probably suggested before, but the topic is not raised too often so here goes the solution:

  1. We introduce two types of threads - normal and “controversial/heated/political” (probably there is a better name)

Normal type is for “technical” discussions, where the best answer is accepted as best by some very large percentage of people, lest say 90-99%. The treshold could be a matter of discussion, but you get the idea. So that would be questions like “How to fix dead radiator in PC”, “Whats best way to do this or that”

Controversial is for discussion where there is potentially lot of disagreement, but also where there could be just some disagreement, but we want to hear other points of view. So all of the political things, questions about genders, etc, everythign that creates heated conversation. Probably could also be used for humourous topics.

The thread type is set while opening a thread, but it can be changed any time during the discussion by forum moderator

  1. We leave normal type discussion as they are on reddit/lemmy whatever. For controversial first when user enters the thread, all of the comments are sorted in random order. All of the comments vote scores are hidden. They are only visible after user casts a vote. This way we eliminate sheep behaviour and demand making their own decision by user. And** changing already casted votes on these threads is NOT POSSIBLE.** This way we force user to be responsible for making a decision. Someone might argue that we sometimes change mind, but it doesnt matter, cause the number of times we change minds is really tiny and the gained changed behaviour is far more valuable. Aafter casting a vote, user can now sort by most popular comments which is now available.

That should be it. There is an extra/additional funcionality, which some forums already have which is freezing the thread after some time (could be hours, 1 day, few days). It could or could not be necessary. It would prevent bad actors from manipulating votes after they already casted a vote with their own account.

What do you think? And also, since lemmy is open source, do you think there is a change that some bigger instance migght create a fork that introduces some of these changes as an experiment?