Fred Wilson writes

The next day I was talking to the founder of a popular blogging service about comments. He pointed out that many comment threads are filled with garbage like LOL, ‘your an idiot’, or worse

He pointed to the comments here at avc and noted how good they were. He called them ‘discussions’.

At Disqus, we call a post a “comment.” Full blown discussion threads are reduced to “responses.” Truthfully, I never liked these labels, but that’s what is familiar to most on the web.

I come from a history of reading and participating on forums and message boards. These messages and posts were not comments — they were full conversations. To a degree, I think referring to comments as such is almost a self-fulfilling label. The comments become superficial, trite responses. Many blogs today have real discussions, where the original blog post or news article is only one of many participants. These conversations should be able to thrive on their own, and not just sit chained to isolated websites.

Perhaps this is why not enough people comment on blogs. I think many are hesitant to participate because the contribution is likely arbitrarily floating and eventually lost. Thoughts should be attributed to the thinkers. They should feel that the discussion has a life beyond the original context. Then, I believe, we’ll see good and more frequent comments. I mean discussions.

This is the direction media is moving in.