This has been chewed on for nearly a year now. The only answer I like so far is, add a revision queue. Basically, author writes story. Author *may* immediately submit for voting. This is not encouraged, though-- instead, people will be urged to submit their story to the "edit queue". While it's there, any reader can make editorial comments, and the author can edit any time they want, as often as they like. Readers can also register a thumbs up or thumbs down, purely informational, to say whether they think it ought to be submitted or not.
So, the author gives it some time, revises if necessary, and has a chance to guage reactions. Eventually, they decide it's done, and they hit "promote", and the story goes to voting. At this point, all the editorial comments are wiped out, and the story is up for voting. It can no longer be edited, but the author can cancel it from the queue if they want to.
This means that we don't have to track revision history, and voting stays simply voting. I think editing and voting should have been different from the beginning, and that this would be a move in the right direction. I may also add a "send back to editing" vote that would let people register that opinion. Not sure how that will factor in to the post/dump algorithm though.
My plan, right now, is to add this roughly as described above. I guess if anyone has either a major objection or a better idea, now's the time. :-)
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