I admit, my interpretation of the circledot and temp gauge also assume a growing Hubski community, and not one that forever remains static around its current size. As the community grows, the hubwheel may be insufficient, and I'd like to see something already in place that can be leveraged to help identify/reward good content, if The Influx ever comes.

There have been several waves of Redditors over the years, and they inevitably use the hubwheel as an upvote, and miss the nuances of this groovy feature. (Then they leave.) So it seems like a social media site needs to take into account it does not operate in a vacuum, but in a world of other social experiences and tools... and needs to recognize new members may need a nudge to help learn the new site's tools.

I also like the idea of me being able to use some unique Markup to make my posts more interactive with my readers, than just comment or circledot. I could imagine a variety of markup that could add an attribute to your posts to inspire different kinds of engagement.

For example, a sidebar/offtopic option, that made your comment into an entirely new post... but left a link to the new post (and the first line or two) in the original comment on the original post. All comments about your sidebar post would appear in the new post, not in the original comment thread. Which would help when conversations diverge out of OP's topic, and into other areas.

Anyway. Just rambling now... :-)