How does moderation work? I could see the bad seeds, who contribute nothing to a discussion, being filtered out by community moderation? Even taking an approach similar to HN where users who flag down a specific comment to a certain threshold could be less visible.
At least then, the "bad" practices can be discussed without the noise that the trolls bring.
We're planning to implement a rating system for comments.
In terms of participants who contribute nothing to the discussion, keep in mind that whoever starts the conversation chooses who to invite. Presumably, those invited will be relevant in some way to the topic being discussed.
We recently added agree/disagree buttons which works much like voting. There have been talks about more sophisticated things like thresholds and sorting, but it is happening slowly.
At least then, the "bad" practices can be discussed without the noise that the trolls bring.