Filtering

Provide for Slashdot like per-user filtering on discussion items based on tag vote counts (ex. only show me discussion items with a vote count of 5+ in some tag.)

This points out a design consideration for tags. Tags can be separated into those with Positive and those with Negative connotations. I'd rather not see Troll 5+. So it would be useful to systematically differentiate. Perhaps each user could manage her own sets of Positive Tags and Negative Tags.

Ranking

As a concept/implementation Tenuring falls within Ranking. Tenuring is a specific Ranking filter that determines when an item is promoted to the Tenure Pool. Tenuring an item might depend on a single tag reaching a certain level (ex. 5 "Informative" votes,) or tenuring might depend on a complex ranking scheme that takes into account multiple tag levels, the author's level, and the number of links from other items (perhaps including direct responses to a discussion item but not responses to those responses ... .)

It might be useful to allow a user to formulate her own ranking filters for both viewing expanded items in a discussion thread and for defining a private tenure pool of her own.

Multiple Pools

In addition to the pools in the Basic Design it might be useful to have multiple other pools. Some might be automatically populated (like the Tenure Pool) while others might require explicit user action to add to/remove from (like the Denied Tenure Pool.) Some pools could potentially be set up as dynamic, user specific, filter based organizational aids (ex. MY Tenure Pool based on my filtering scheme.)

Trash

Only authorized users can trash items.