Maybe we need a “move to open discussion thread” voting button in addition to the karma buttons. Above a certain threshold off-topic but useful discussions could thereby be moved and orphaned from an original <-4 parent, perhaps leaving a link to the new thread or more sensibly someone else could just link to the new thread in another comment if there’s any lingering topicalness. This would further discourage trolls because there would no longer be any correlation between their downvoted comment and a good discussion.
Maybe we need a “move to open discussion thread” voting button in addition to the karma buttons. Above a certain threshold off-topic but useful discussions could thereby be moved and orphaned from an original <-4 parent, perhaps leaving a link to the new thread or more sensibly someone else could just link to the new thread in another comment if there’s any lingering topicalness. This would further discourage trolls because there would no longer be any correlation between their downvoted comment and a good discussion.