Could be nice if it also differentiated between read and unread posts (some posts I'm not sure if I've read, but if it showed me i read it then it's more likely that it's a post i forgot about because it didn't affect me much, which can inform my vote)

Thanks, that's a helpful feature :)

I would love to have variable voting so i could give (or take) anywhere between one and my maximum vote strength. The way I'd do it is have each click increase the vote strength by one, and a long press set it to max strength (Keep the current tooltip so people know). then to cancel the vote (whether positive or negative) there would be a small X to the side of the up/down buttons. 

I know it has been discussed already, but just wanted to give this as another datapoint. it happens to me a lot that i want to give a post more than 1 karma but less than 5, so i would use this a lot if it was possible.

There's hypertext, but there's no link

What is the class which ask/guess/tell/reveal cultures are instances of? it doesn't currently have a name (at least not something less general than communication culture), which makes this awkward to talk about or reference. so i thought about it for a bit, and came up with Expectation Culture. 

Ask/guess/tell/reveal culture are a type of expectation culture. they're all cultures where one thing that is said maps to a different expectation. this is also the case with different kinds of asks. 

This seems like a useful phrase with which to bundle these things together.

I usually just call it "from A to Z"

Here you go: four layers of intellectual conversation.

Would be good to have it as a tag/wiki page

I wonder, was this was posted by the mods like Francis Bacon's writings?

My technical knowledge is limited, so i didn't try to go into implementation details. but just thinking out loud about options:

1. The company would run the code itself (Technically solves the problem really easily, but then running someone else's code is a big no no, so that's probably not a viable direction)
2. The company would create an API for these algorithms to use (Probably also solves the problem, but severely limits the freedom of the third party)
3. The data would be sent to the user, and the algorithm would run client side (though It's possibly too much data to send to the client, or running the algorithm will require too much computing)

I expect someone more knowledgeable than myself to have a much better idea of the possibilities and the difficulties.

That is indeed a potential problem, and another person i told this idea to was skeptical that people would choose the "healthy" algorithms instead of algorithms similar to the current ones that are more amusing.

I think it's hard to know what the outcome of this will be, I'm optimistic, but the pessimistic side definitely has merit too. this is in a way similar to the internet, where people were very optimistic for what it can do, but failed to see the potential problems it would create, and when social media finally came it showed a much sadder image.

But also similar to the internet, i think people should have the choice, i wouldn't want anyone to restrict the algorithms i can use because some people may choose algorithms that someone thinks are harmful.

At the end of the day, if someone is really motivated to be in an echo chamber, nothing's gonna stop them. this idea might help those that find themselves in echo chambers because of the current algorithm, but would rather be out.