[sad_panda]

Not just Reddit, HN derives tremendous value from quality commenting.

Commenting with zero accountability (authenticated accounts, voting, flagging, whatever) is basically doomed to be awful and a net negative to the service.

[AkThhhpppt]

"Very likely to be" - yes, definitely. "Doomed to be" - not even nearly. There are blog communities I've been a part of that knock HN comments out of the ring, with zero friction to comment (a name and email address are required, but that email address is never validated). It's about moderation and caring enough to grow a community, not the specific mechanism you use to do that.