Some thoughts I wanted to jot down before I forget them:

No form of technology, not matter how advanced or well implemented will change human nature. It is human nature to argue, and no automatic tools seem to be able to do anything about it. (see: Slashdot, K5 moderation systems, Advogato trust matrix, Wiki) Not that arguing is always bad.

Groupthink is a big problem on web discussion pages, and most techincal moderation solutions only increase that problem.

Early adoptors often adopt new things not because they like new things, but because they like the way things used to be "before everyone else came along". I'm not sure if this is true - I need to think about it some more.

Community feeling isn't scalable, but new people joining a community don't realise that what they have joined isn't the same as what it was before. Or maybe there is a critical point above which communities don't scale. Or maybe there is an event which triggers community collapse. Or maybe not.