We aren't really the content. As opposed to blogs (gawd how I loathe that word). You are the content. You're the ones with standards. Not us. If you want us to apply your standards to ourselves then pay us and let us use our real names or at least pen names. We haven't changed anything. Your decision to open the floodgates unedited is what's changed. Or maybe it's that frightful realization that online is little more than listening to a screeching mob of 1000 strangers.

What an annoying and idiotic article.

Like a journalist gangster staking out his territory, Kamiya engages in an assault to discredit, diminish and try to discourage the encroachment unrestricted online commentary on his neighborhood.

This paragraph from the first page says it all:

"And, of course, there has been an explosion of expertise. The information revolution has set off a million car bombs of random knowledge at once, spraying info fragments through the marketplace of ideas. Sometimes it feels as if the Internet has turned the whole country, indeed the whole world, into a virtual New York City, a dense, antimatter-like place where within any four-block grid there are hundreds of people who know more about Miles Davis or Linux or Giorgio de Chirico or the Ruy Lopez opening or Peyton Manning's attack on the two-deep zone than you do. (As a starry-eyed provincial, I like to think of New York this way, even though it's probably an illusion.)"

Gee whillikers, a million car bombs spraying Gary with informational shrapnel. It is insidious, it is out of control, the nasty and hurtful ravings of the fools knaves and nut cases who pen this vitriol. Polemical terrorists! If Gary were really interested in journalism, he would be celebrating the revolution in the exchange of information and ideas. The problem is not the unmoderated commentary, the problem is old guard journalists like Gary who so deeply resent that they will no longer be indulged in the luxury of one way communication.

Totally agree about the rampant misogyny, but you guys just gave an Editor's choice star to the condescending comment of the notorious woman bashing troll brightstar65, who regularly spews ugliness and seems to blame all women for his own poisonous experiences (which he often overshares).

If you want to elevate the level of discourse, then you need to start paying enough attention to the comments section that you can recognize regular trolls. You don't have to censor them, but rewarding them does nothing for the reading experience.

in different ways. It is undermining our individual power but creating opportunities we never could have imagined even ten years ago. For some of us, the Internet has taken our jobs, or reduced our earning power or made our jobs easier and helped us make more money.

The Internet and blogosphere have given journalists much more exposure than they ever could have had without it and also much greater vulnerability to stinging attack. Get used to change. We have to.

I think the postings on Salon are generally good to great, especially on the War Room. They are a validation that I am not the only person who thinks the present administration has taken our country over the cliff. Also, I love Sidney Blumenthal. He is a brilliant wordsmith and analyst.

We need lions, tigers and bears.

Provided that writers aren't going to be STRICTLY and DIRECTLY held accountable for the opinions of the masses, I think instant feedback is a good thing.

Just because a human can string a bunch of words together to form a complete sentence does not make them humane or their personality viable in the public sphere. They need to know that and they need to be treated accordingly by the blogosphere. It is good, if qualitative, information. If a writer really wants to get to the bottom of something, they can perform a quantitative study to determine just how close to the mark a particular set of opinions expressed in the blogosphere actually are. And a whole new cottage industry is born.

I also believe that it is not healthy to be constantly whining, complaining, criticizing and finding fault with people who simply view reality from a wholely different perspective. We need to learn from this phenomenon and move on, never forgetting that people we agree with need our support, too. Controversy sells because it has aspects of catharsis associated with it, but people also need to understand more about what it means to be a human being, instead of bitching at other human beings because they are uncomfortable with their lot in life.

Meaning that this medium is a mirror and a polished mirror provides the best reflection. As long as I have the right to squelch and screen out the opinions of people I know aren't interested in seeing things clearly, let it all roll out. The information is useful to someone, somewhere at some point.

I've been writing online since the Compuserve days. If I haven't found a good reason to turn off the spiggot, wholesale, I don't think any reasonable person can.

As Karl Popper once suggested, however, we need to be on the look out for unreasonable people. When we spot them, we need to call them on it and keep honking until they either knock it off or move on to greener pastures. Just because the English language has no linguistic way of resolving the issue of intolerance of the intolerant does not mean that we have to tolerate the intolerant. As Popper said, if the tolerant tolerate the intolerant, soon neither the tolerant nor the intolerant will exist.

If all we're getting from a writer or a blogger is spew with no substance or experience to back it up, then it's time to become intolerant of the intolerant.

My quibble: you write about writers "It simply means you have some aptitude for what you do and have spent years learning to do it, and so you're probably better at it than most people."

Maybe. Or maybe you're related to someone important, or maybe you just know how to mine a vein of resentment that sells books, or maybe you had some early, serendipitous success and have been coasting on your reputation ever since.

Who gets published and where is an incredibly subjective decision, and not always based on talent or originality. I see no harm in readers pointing out shoddy thinking or bad writing.

My observation: the world of writing has changed. Change, sometimes dramatic change, is inevitable. Writers will adapt. Writers of the future won't know the world any other way.

Thanks for writing.