Comments on the whole whole suck so much harder than they should do. Has anyone ever tried a Wiki as comment system? Does it work?
I’ve just found out that Gizmodo has an invitation-only comment policy, which seems strange, partly because Gizmodo isn’t the sort of site where comments are terribly useful. (Since each post is basically hard news–there’s very little opinion–there’s not much need for other points of view.)
The explanation for this policy seems unnecessarily elitist, too: “Most online communities are like Apple Stores and hip bars—they quickly get overrun with tourists, thus lowering the overall quality of the experience. The same thing will happen to us eventually too. But we’re going to try to put off that moment for as long as possible.”