I&#x27;m excited to see what the Motherboard Letters experiment turns up. I honestly can&#x27;t recall the last comment section I read that added to the discussion. Aside from hot-button political or social issues with their associated vitriol, even technical videos or software reviews are cluttered with useless claptrap. Maybe I read the wrong sites. But when I was a heavier dead-paper consumer, I absolutely enjoyed the letters section of quite a few periodicals.<p>I think punting to social media is... uninvested. I enjoy twitter more as an index of links, rather than actual convo. Facebook, meh. It&#x27;s facebook - a conversation mediated by an ever-shifting overlord that I don&#x27;t care to participate in. But neither of them are lauded as interlocution par excellence, last I checked.<p>The big question for me is how the issue of engagement plays out. Comments update in realtime, letters assume you&#x27;re familiar with the antecedent article.<p>Either which way, I think it&#x27;s about time we saw more experimentation in this area.<p>(I&#x27;m glad I had the opportunity to read a page full of people projecting their own egos, conspiracies, and neurosis on this very article.)