If you edit, restrict or moderate letter submissions you will have a like minded circle jerk of angry well wishers inside of 2 weeks. Guaranteed. Go check out Crooksandliars.com if you doubt me. Every note is one angry progressive congratulating the last angry progressive for insulting the 2% of the people who post there who don't share exactly the same opinions as the 4 dozen 'main' people. It's very incestuous. And since Salon clearly has an agenda - it would go the same route.

As somone said; "What good is power if you can't abuse it"?

When they read ridiculous statements in a publication they pay for, statements like "Al Gore invented the internet..." or "where is the outrage over the war". Statements written by "pundits" or wannabes who sit in their offices and pound out silly articles like this one. People write mean letters to you, Gary (and Ayelet and that guy who whined because his kid was kicked out of daycare for biting) because they think you write crap. If you don't want letters, please consider that fact.

...with the right wing radio call-in show.

And the roots of the phenomenon predate even that - with what Richard Sennett called The Fall of Public Man.

We're the most generally educated society in history. Yet outside of a small circle of friends and family - or school if you're still in it - we've long had nowhere to discuss our opinions publicly with others - or more to the point, with total strangers.

Apparently one used to be able to do this in 18 century coffeehouses, according to Sennett. The desire has been bottled up that long.

And for that long, professional journalists have held a monopoly on it, forcing us to read their opinions - or read none at all, except the few they selected for their Letters sections.

No wonder in the first few years of the internet it's been exploding in flames.

Pretty soon it will burn the old world you long for up, and you won't be able to make a living at opinion writing anymore.

Oh, writing's such hard work, huh? Then why is there such an oversupply of people who want to do it for a living? Journalists, writers, humanities professors - maybe even politicians - all are tied to outmoded means of production that limited their ranks to the fortunate few.

Time to end the monopoly and democratize debate.

Only problem is: someone needs to invent a new way to organize discussion, so that it can occur on a large scale - yet still seem intimate. So that it can have the mutual respect of an 18th century coffeehouse, yet issue in decisions ratified by millions.

Whoever figures that out will truly change the world.

This article was ridiculous on every level. As pointed out Salon needs these raging flame wars for ad revenue. So this is clearly just a device to protect the ego of the over-sensitive writers. It automatically assumes that all the criticism of Waldman is due to misogyny rather than the obvious fact that she is self-important and rather vapid.

But the Al Gore JOKE was funny. It was the only thing worth reading in the entire stupid article.

I'm convinced that all of the people getting their panties in a bunch about the Gore joke are the same irony deficient boomers who get twisted up by the usually hilarious Heather Haverlesky calling them "Chickens".

Trust me on this one, no one who doesn't know that Al Gore DID NOT invent the internet is ever going to read an article on Salon about reader letters.

And as for Anonomous postings? Yeah, some people use it for abuse, but soem of us use it so we can post our honest opinions about things like Marijuana legalization, socialism, sexism, sex, abortion, etc, etc, etc without worrying about future employers Google-ing us during a background check.

I've been a fan of salon since its inception, but my love for the sight has been slowly eroding for years now, and has gone down hill rapidly in the last year. The only thing that keeps me coming back is Heather, Andrew O'Hehir and the letters section. Do away with the letters, do away with the anonymous postings, and you will lose a lot of readers (click-through revenue) just like me.

That's why I don't read the letters.

I enjoy Salon. If an article particularly inspires me to comment, I might forward it to a friend with whom I can have a fruitful discussion.

But I never read the letters (including any of the letters preceding this one), because I know they will be tiresome, hateful, and self-congratulatory - the exact opposite of the fine writing in the articles.

So Mr. Kamiya and other writers, please take heart. The ranters are not a representative sample of your readers. Some of us are delighted to remain just that, readers; write for us.

1) Editing + moderation produces monoculture, or in the case of 'MSM balance' a duopolist culture.

2) Salon is using a "click through" business model based on ad revenue, probably to offset previous declines in subscriptions.

3) The click though model incentivizes controversial and inflammatory articles, to generate many letters and clicks.

4) The quantity of letters has an inverse correlation with the quality of letters.

5) 3 + 4 hurt subscriptions which encourages 2, which is a vicious cycle, probably with diminishing returns and can;t be good for long term viability of Salon.

6) Kamiya wishes people would read the inflammatory and poorly conceived articles Salon has been posting of late, and yet refrain from writing inflammatory and poorly conceived letters in response. Not likely.

7) The better articles on Salon don't really generate enough click throughs and letters, but are vital for Salon to maintain some credibility and subscription base.

Again, that's why I propose a user level filtering system, where each user form conversations more as people do in real life, without being trolled. Threading and other common technical enhancements might also be welcome.

Salon can still generate massive click troughs and provoke oodles of letters with controversial articles; only readers will have the ability to filter out the worst of it.