I miss the blogosphere. Making it so you had to put a bit of elbow grease into seeking out someone vigorously disagreeing with someone else, instead of putting it literally one inch down, kept the conversations a lot cooler. Two bloggers could wall-of-text-quote each other for weeks at a time, but
either one could unilaterally break it off essentially by simply stopping; the other could keep going but only people who sought it out would keep getting it. If you didn't obsess about your referrer logs you could just keep going as if it was no big deal. Even if you did obsess, it's still easier not to engage with them than when the text of the article is right in your face.
A lot of the apparent flaws are really virtues in disguise... but then, it's the same flaws that got them stomped because the hot communities are just so much more engaging than the cool communities, even if I'd submit the cool communities are ahead on almost every other metric other than "engagement".