Here is one popular blog with a simple open voting system: http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog
That has voting but it doesn’t seem to have threaded comments. That means switching to that plugin would break all the existing comment threads.
As I said, Scott is not interested in improving the commenting system,
I would guess that the main issue is that he doesn’t want to do work to improve it.
Arguing what’s an improvement also isn’t easy.
If I look at the blogs of influential people who do put effort into it, I don’t see that they all use a comment solution that Scott refuses to use.
That has voting but it doesn’t seem to have threaded comments. That means switching to that plugin would break all the existing comment threads.
I would guess that the main issue is that he doesn’t want to do work to improve it.
Arguing what’s an improvement also isn’t easy.
If I look at the blogs of influential people who do put effort into it, I don’t see that they all use a comment solution that Scott refuses to use.