This sounds like an interesting project, Sarah. Given the Washington Post has partnered with Mozilla and The New York Times are funding a $4 million project to bring easier comments and photos to news sites, it's clear publishers still see the value of comments.

Among many of the things I wrote about in a recent post on the value of comments was the fact that as well as keeping discussions open from both sides of a perspective, comments can also greatly help revenue and ROI (there's a study that showed commenters are 5x more likely to buy than regular subscribers, for example).

If tech giants like Google, and publishing giants like TWP and NYT can bring open yet respectful commenting as standard, the web might just become fun again (and profitable for publishers).