Or autoread the text in a proportionately louder voice.
Aye, I really dislike when it's used in places I like to read completely rather than just skim. Works well on stackexchange etc. though.
It definitely works there because it's generally not a discussion. Questions with the best answers higher.
If I was going to add it, I'd do a up / down vote thing but rather than the promotion system Slashdot have, which I agree wouldn't really work with Beehive's threaded structure, I'd probably go with something like Eurogamer's comment system where you have a user definable threshold (which would be a combination of total score and number of votes) and if the score goes below this the posts are hidden. Kinda like a social ignore list.
(This of course would be optional and you could choose not to set a threshold)
OMG STILL NO EMOTES
<uncaches things>
Oh wait, I adblocked that fucking purple spanking thing and it seems to have applied generally.
Give it time, ken. Give it time.
Why is it always cocks and never lady gardens?
The comments on Ars Technica have a similar system, and it works well there too – comments with more than 20 downvotes get collapses automatically, unless they also have a similarly high number of upvotes.