1. A method for promoting learned discourse in online forums comprising: posting forum content on a forum server and providing access to users to the content through an I/O module; receiving a comment from a user; analyzing, with a content analysis module executed on a computer processor, the comment from the user to produce an a priori score for the comment; accepting a portable certificate of status from a user; and using the portable certificate of status, with a scoring module executed on the computer processor, to produce an a posteriori score for the comment.