[mturmon]

And to pursue this point, one person greatly influenced by Sullivan was his ex-colleague at The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates (who just won a MacArthur fellowship).

Coates had a very well-policed comments section, which for several years attracted some high-quality comments and really excellent exchanges - the equal of anything here on HN within its chosen domain (essentially, race and history). Coates is black, of course, so there was a lot of moderation needed. It proved unsustainable and his posts don't have comments any more.

This retrospective article sums up the trajectory of a lot of high-quality comments sections, like Sullivan's and Coates': http://blog.longreads.com/2015/02/04/its-yours-a-short-histo...

Basically, it needs organic growth and a lot of personal attention. And it seems to have a finite lifetime.