I admit that my ability to comment is variable depending on whether or not I am running late when I am reading my dreamwidth feed in the morning and how much time I have to savor the lovely delicacies left out by poetree hosts. This is really and truly a shame, and I'm not sure if there's a better way for me to handle it aside from setting aside a poetree time for myself when I just read this comm (rather than trying to rush to catch up on my feed, when I may end up skimming things). I don't know how you would implement that with other people, but I think your current weekly challenge idea is a great one and can certainly encourage others to do so.

In terms of giving kudos, I think the poll idea is a good one if people know that this is coming in a meta-post (and it's posted at the beginning of a meta post rather than at the end, because I almost missed it one day).

It would be nice if there were more jumpings-in between different threads, so that if I commented and person X commented and the author responded to each of us we might also respond to the other person's thread, too. I think that would help make it more of a community discussion rather than feeling rather limited.

Could perhaps people post discussion questions for particular weeks to get things rolling, or is that too middle school?