LogFAQs > #973681129

with upvotes, threaded replies, etc. instead of a straightforward chronological ordering of posts like most traditional forums have, is that its much easier to engage in productive discourse.

When you open a Reddit thread (assuming you have the replies sorted by best or top or whatever its called) you can read the opening post, then immediately scroll down and see the most popular response, and the most popular responses to that response, and so forth. The obvious weakness there is that it boils down to a popularity contest and encourages responses that will garner the most upvotes (whether or not they are actually productive), but

Often what happens in GameFAQs and other similar forums is you find a topic with hundreds of posts, read the OP, and then ignore the rest of the topic, post your two cents, and leave. I myself am guilty of this, toosometimes parsing through page after page of back and forth to keep up with where the topic is going just doesnt seem like its worth the effort. The result is you get a handful of people having a back and forth argument with each other that is punctuated by random people coming in and posting the exact same takes that were addressed two hundred posts ago.

Im not going to say the Reddit format is objectively or even subjectively better, and I certainly wouldnt advocate changing GameFAQs to be more like it, but it seems to me like it does a better job (at least in this one aspect) of enabling consensus through discussion than traditional forums do.