The new system allows you to make up a name like "Kentwatchdog", instead of commenting as a recognizable member of the community.   Also, why would "combative" be bad?  People have legitimately different ideas about matters of public interest and the "combat" of those ideas helps us as a group determine the most workable solutions.   And really, discussions in the Kent paper have been generally fairly innocuous.   The proposed system, by its own admission, punishes diversity of opinion.   I expect it to turn comments into an echo chamber where only the most broadly supported concepts prevail, and minorities are suppressed.