I find that these discussions of &quot;to comment and like&quot; or &quot;not to comment and like&quot; always misses the mark. Both sides of the discussion have solid arguments and I find it hard to imagine the discussion ever resolving itself to anything thereby keeping a status quo noone is really satisfied with.<p>The problem is that most peoples frame of reference when talking about comments and &quot;likes&quot; is the facebook, reddit or [insert some publisher] model. That is all fine and dandy as a starting point, but let&#x27;s not forget that all of those models are specifically engineered to keep people posting and liking as much as possible rather than focusing on like and comment quality. There is no reason, or at least i don&#x27;t see it, why a different model focusing on like and comment quality could not be engineered. Furthermore, if such a model could be engineered well enough, I don&#x27;t see why a comment and like section of arxiv could not contribute to furthering science as a whole. With that in mind a much more fruitful and positive discussion could be had about &quot;how do we create a comment and like section where everyones interests are protected?&quot; rather than the old back and forth discussion of easing barrier of entry vs quality.<p>As others have noted much better starting points for the above discussion could be the stack-overflow model or something similar.