>1. Attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way."

There's a closely related concept with a pretty catchy name, which is something that's often useful for making concepts stick; perhaps HN could make use of it. That concept is the "steel man":

>Sometimes the term "steel man" is used to refer to a position's or argument's improved form. A straw man is a misrepresentation of someone's position or argument that is easy to defeat: a "steel man" is an improvement of someone's position or argument that is harder to defeat than their originally stated position or argument. [1]

It can be used as a noun or a verb, e.g.

>We will want to "steel-man" NASA's argument. [2]

This can be considered a stronger version of the idea in 1. since it deals with improving not only the expression but also the substance of the opposing side's argument.

[1] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man

[2] http://lesswrong.com/lw/hab/rocket_science_and_big_money_a_c...