I have a feeling I've written this up before but what the heck. 

I get a fair number of people who leave comments that are basically complaints. I want them to know that I hear them, but I don't want them to feel offended if their comments don't appear on my site. 

I'm much more interested in informed discourse. If you disagree, no problem, but give us some information to reward my readers for listening. Teach us something. Really. I'd like to act as a filter for my readers, to make sure only stuff that offer really new perspectives are on the page. Or if they say something in a creative or zingy way. Let's not be prudes (so many are). 

In the early days of Scripting News, we had something like this that worked great, the Mail Pages. People would send email responses to my stories (which went out via email, then appeared on the web), and I could respond personally, or add it to the site for that day. Or sometimes both. And often I would pin a short response in what was posted on the site. And I could select a paragraph or two, out of a much longer piece. Keep it peppy. (People sure can ramble.) 

It worked socially too, people didn't expect their comments to be published. And generally they were happy when they were. It was switched around from the way things work today. 

I'd love to have something that worked like that now. I'd try it at least for a while as the commenting system on Scripting News, so you'd have a good testbed.