Quality of comments 1

At best, extremely good. At worst, which unfortunately is a significant number of reviews, sub-literate gruntings of brain-damaged pigs. Some funny stuff though, and not all of it intentional.

UPDATE: The advent of Facebook and myspace applications and the speedrating feature have really driven the comments into the ground. I've never been one to whine much, but I think it has reached a point where it threatens the long-term viability of the site for those of us who are at least partially literate. A big part of my enjoyment of the site has been the ability to read the views of some intelligent folks on here, get a different perspective than my own, or perhaps brighten my day with a little humor.

It has never bothered me that those folks are much in the minority, but as is inevitable, some of them leave the site over time. In the past this wasn't a big deal, because usually someone showed up to replace them on the literate end of the spectrum. These days, however, that seems less and less the case. I've had several personal experiences of showing the site to intelligent folks, only to have them utterly turned off by the one line, or one word idiocies of the recent comments page. Someone like me, or any of a dozen or so others who knows how to dig a bit can find something worth reading, but a newcomer cannot, and observing what appears to be yet another website for ignoramuses, will not.

I fear the intelligent review and reviewer on here is a declining and dwindling commodity. And when they are gone, where is the unique quality of the site? I feel like I watching the evolution of an animal I don't care much for...