Interesting -- what other system could you possibly have, other than votes...? I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting. I guess traditional forum threads (sometimes with votes, a-la GitHub) are nice, but ultimately that's just trading "correct sounding" for "early commenter".

Otherwise, the only thing that comes to mind is StackOverflow functionality where OP can mark a single answer as "accepted" and push it to the top instantly (which obv. wouldn't translate well to general discussions).