Hypothesis: posts that are outliers in engagement metrics (comments, score, etc) are more likely to be low quality/controversial/damaging to communities.
People often talk loosely about bikeshedding, but: "A [nuclear] reactor is so vastly expensive and complicated that an average person cannot understand it (see ambiguity aversion), so one assumes that those who work on it understand it. On the other hand, everyone can visualize a cheap, simple bicycle shed, so planning one can result in endless discussions because everyone involved wants to add a touch and show personal contribution."
In application: are submissions/stories/posts that are low-quality (eg, politically motivated, flamebait, etc) more likely to get rapid and extensive engagement than technical/on-topic posts, because those low-quality posts have a low barrier to entry?
Can we automatically detect engagement-outlier posts and freeze them into a moderation queue for consideration before re-enabling discussion?
If so, can such a system focus a community back on topical discussion rather than in-fighting?
@zachdecook whos going to stop me