"...the percentage of letter writers who are fools, knaves, blowhards and nuts has exponentially increased."

A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage.

"The Emperor is naked," he said.

"Fool!" his father reprimanded, running after him. "Don't talk nonsense!" He grabbed his child and took him away. But the boy's remark, which had been heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:

"The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It's true!"

The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He though it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn't see his clothes was either stupid or incompetent. And he stood stiffly on his carriage, while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.

Reader comments are very useful for the particular topics of error-checking, and for disabusing writers of common myths about things that never happened.

For example, Al Gore never claimed to have "invented the Internet". And yet Gary Kamiya passes on a comment in this article that yet again scores a humor point based on a talking point created by anti-Gore forces. Sadly, many, many journalists exist in a culture of shared myths that makes few requirements of fact verification.

From my standpoint, what bothers writers the most is when they are called on their factual errors. It's true that being caught in a mistake entails a loss of face for the writer. OTOH, if "professional journalists" were doing their job properly, this wouldn't be a problem.

While I think it's valuable to step-back and assess "where we are now" in the journalism "revolution," technologically, we are just at the beginning. For better or worse, this will shake out. Whether readers, letter-writers, and journalists like it or not, "communities," for lack of a better term, will form around media outlets. Why? Because that's what people do. This doesn't mean, btw, that one needs to lose anonymity. But the guy in the back of the room hurling insults will make less noise than the articulate person front and center.

You know, for every dateless misogynist on here there's an "all sex is rape" doctrinairix, so I'd lighten up on casting the gender-based aspersions.

The larger question is why have this unofficial scrivening priest caste known as "The Writer" at all. Why not just have some matrix of a million postings a minute and let readers sift and weigh who's worthy of attention in the first place?

Mr. Kamiya makes a final resort, after a long wordy section devoted mostly to expressing various degrees of hurt about being criticized, to the aesthetics of literary prose. I have to admit, and I hope very sincerely that this isn't too harsh a word, this argument seems a little disingenuous. We're not talking about massive feedback to Richard Powers, or William Vollman, or even Phillip Roth or Martin Amis here; people trying to "take down" big time prize-winning novelists is not the issue. If it were, there would certainly be no need to go into the reams of reader talkback on the internet to come up with examples of gratuitous, even nonsensical nastiness. We have a published author who has served as the main fiction critic of one of our most respected intellectual journals (The New Republic) for that. I'm speaking of course of one Dale Peck; and now there are acolytes of Mr. Peck's in his former chair at that worthy organ of critical sensibility to carry forward the banner of "authenticity," to merit which they feel compelled to blast or kneecap any more -famous or successful author they find insufficiently intense or cool. If it's the infantilization of criticism Mr. Kamiya is worried about, he need look no further than the fellow members of his own "professional" guild. No need to bring in the masses of loudmouth plebes. If the extremely serious editors of America's most serious publication refuse to remonstrate with their own book reviewers (and let's be clear: Mr. Peck and his adepts are invariably inept critics, with a tin ear for language and with no patience for careful, scrupulous analysis), then why should we expect anything better from the hordes at the cyber gates?

In fact the most ruthless opinions about writers are usually pronounced by other writers. I don't think enjoining readers to become more "professional" in their attitude would do anything to raise the tone of feedback culture. Writers are eternally personal in their feelings about criticism and will never be capable themselves of any reaction to someone else's work other than simple love or hate. Everything else is rationalization.

Serious criticism, from people who have time and vocabulary enough to sit with a text and sound it out, puzzle out its aporeia, catch its drift, intertext it, commune with it, has never possessed an audience more than vanishingly insignificant in numbers. One will never increase those numbers by appealing to the kind of intellectual virtues cultivated by a literary milieu that values above all sponaneity, documentary authenticity or compelling (as in entertaining) narrative. The more feedback there is, the harder it will be to find truly trenchant meta-writing; those who are motivated, I assume, will do so. That's the final secret of how the internet is deconstructing the whole idea of a discreet, integral, metaphysically gounded thing called a "Writer": nothing is missing; nothing is lost; everything is preserved and situated and fully present, as long as you're willing and able to dedicate your life to searching.

I did love the quote from "Phineas Finn," one of my favorite books. It's an ironical statement, of course. Every writer, indeed, every public personality loves to see themself as the object of the attentions of others. All protestations to the contrary are but the bitter sighs of lachrymose alligators.

Maybe in addition to an Editor's Choice star, there should be a symbol for vicious or really stupid irrelevant posts. Like when Heather Havrilesky writes and article and people respond "she's an idiot; she must be a horrible mother". Or, "you don't agree with me? F*** off!" Or my other favorite "You are evilly selfish for wanting to have a biological baby" That way we could filter the worst out.

I really enjoy the letters sections until they get to the nasty personal attacks (on the author or subjects or the other posters). I usually sign off there, which is unfortunate because sometimes the original topic would make for interesting further discussion.