Being able to comment and rate search results is new to most people. So how do you re-educate the ones who don't "get it?"
Anyone have some advice?

I am working on some video tutorials for my site to explain it. So I'll see how that works out.

Maybe more than people understanding the social aspect, people are not motivated to participate because my user base hasn't reached a critical mass (or tipping point). I don't know.

Also,
What do you do with your old hot searches? Just send them to the recycle bin or do you have some way that you are archiving them?
Archiving them somehow would give them more time to be read, voted on, etc.

I was using a pligg (digg.com clone) to archive them but it was too much trouble. I am working on a new method using an RSS feed to publish old hot searches to blog posts (a separate blog that acts as my hot search archive).