Hi Curtis, Christa from Civil here!

We were concerned about mob rule, too; that's why we took extra precautions to keep the comments from turning into an echo chamber. Each comment is reviewed by multiple people, and we pool and analyze those reviews to check for patterns of bias and abuse. 

We also use that data to help decide who sees which comments for review, and we anonymize veteran commenters to prevent bias against specific users. 

So far, it's been working well! People are attacking ideas, instead of each other. We hope it's a great fit for Civil Beat!