Now that it's added, I would expect people to actually use it. What's up with the string of "unhelpfuls" on ALL of the seafood reviews I've left? Put your money where your mouth is, and if you've got a good rebuttal, put up or shut up.

You know what Magellan, I agree. But let's look at this on another positive angel.

If I understand you correctly, it would be almost like a "converstion tree". and that would be perfect. Take, for example, an imaginary list from May 2004 about various desserts and has 302 posts about pie. If you wanted to get a general idea of the overall feeling towards pie, you now have to read all of them...and it always looks like this:

Posts 6, 27, 38, 102, 116, 146, 220 and 247 all say the exact same thing, "I like apple pie".

But if the original, post 6, could have it's own direction, it would cut the 302 single comments into perhaps 14 sub-conversations....and if I don't care about apple pie, I don't have to scroll trough all the apple rubbish to find comments regarding my favorite pie, vodka (I'll have it added as a suggestion).

Isolation for bashing purposes does serve a purpose, but there are other advantages as well.

There's more going on here than meets the eye.

For years, the lowest level of the site has been the item/listing level. This has worked fine, but the problem is that there is no way to isolate a particular review. In other words, because each review does not have its own URL, it's impossible to set up a permanent link (permalink) to a review.

This makes it hard for other sites to link to a review, for RIA'ers to save particular reviews for reference (e.g. "favorites"), for people to flag individual reviews as being inappropriate, for RIA to share revenue on specific reviews, and yes, for people to rebuttals.

I read a lot of blogs, and one of the many things that I like about the format is that it gives readers of a post the opportunity to respond. Sometimes the conversation in the rebuttals is better than the post itself.

So the real issue in play here, is whether RIA should give each review its own URL. This would enable all sorts of new functionality - like favorites, flagging, rev sharing, rebuttals, permalinks, etc.

I think the answer should be "YES."

These ideas are getting worse. . .

As IJR noted, a rebuttal comment is essentially threading and, therefore, I must rate this suggestion as terrible if it will change the current format of the comments and okay if it was only included as an additional feature of RateItAll. That leaves an average of bad (i.e. I wouldn't use it under the current scheme). I see no reason to debate whether Picasso paints funny or if Aerosmith rocks. For the most part, no one is going to change any minds. Moreover, we can already revise our ratings in response to subsequent comments or a change of opinion if so inclined. The concept of this site (as I understand it) is based on reviews and comments, not necessarily back and forth debate. There are other sites for that type of thing, and a review should stand on its own. Perhaps a better idea is for those members interested in this feature to start a forum elsewhere for RateItAll related discussions, with a link on each list for the applicable message board.