It's almost worth building the ability to submit additional sources of the same story and being able to vote them up till they become the main link

Who would identify which submissions are the same story?

I think it's just done by voting, anyone could submit an alternative link, but it would need X upvotes to be promoted to the primary link.

I can see how this might not work so well with contentious stories, but when it's just linking to the primary source vs a poorly written article on a secondary source it might improve the experience.

This is also true when something is paywalled but there are alternative versions.

Edit: In my mind it's an additional facet, rather than just being done in comments. Maybe it's not even visible unless you're a high karma individual.

Yes, this is close to the various scribbles in my head on this topic, which hopefully we can turn into working software one day.