I think a rating system for posts would greatly enhance FT's value and also streamline some of the more debated threads; so it would be even better, in my view, to vote up and down each post, such as in some disquus fora.

This would be a somewhat gentle way of saying, without censoring, that the community agree / does not agree with what someone is saying, and I believe it would abbreviate some more "stubborn" discussions.

Amazon has an indirect way to to this, geared to their circumstances, as they push to the forefront the reviews that are more helpfull (this would not be directly possible here) and even, in the discussions that follow, they put as out-of-view a post that had been massively down voted.