If building a better comment system was the goal, iterating on the progress made by dedicated comment sites like Hacker News, Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, et al seems a much savvier plan than blowing it up and starting over. While we stop short of praising comment threading, voting, and flagging as panaceas, it does seem undeniable that Twitter solves none of those issues, introducing instead a host of its own.

By replacing comments with tweets, Happy Cog twice undermines its audience, first by contributing to the general Internet noise pollution (as well as the specific article comment thread noise) and second by trivializing the resulting discussion. Artificial brevity is a flaw not a feature. It makes substantive conversation if not impossible at least heavily discouraged. Ex-communicating the indefinite length, local comment as the fundamental unit of a larger intellectual discussion is inimical to Internet culture and, most importantly, learning — which we presume is a core value of any blog post.

But perhaps we’re unfair. We tremble at the thought of standing in the way of progress and stick-in-the-mud traditionalism is hardly our philosophy. Maybe the goal was to simply make it easier for people to leave feedback on the article. In that case, Cognition has succeeded wildly. It is a bold move (though perhaps a bit shy of “brilliant” as many commenters tweeters gush)  worthy of applause. If upsetting the rotting apple cart of blog commenting is one outcome, it won’t all have been for naught.

Our metaphorical fingers are crossed that Happy Cog instituted this system not as part of a grand PR scheme but in the sincere belief that it offered at least the chance of a better model by holding commenters accountable and elevating responding blogs to first-class comment citizens. If that is the case, we humbly suggest supplementing Twitter and blogs with good, old-fashioned comments à la Disqus because, on some level, a well-considered comment system is irreducibly complex. It requires a spectrum of in situ response lengths to adequately simulate real conversation.¹ By striving for “simple” we fear Happy Cog has strayed into “simplistic.” Unless changes are made, commenting on a Cognition post is an exercise in futility, home only to well-meaning pats-on-the-back and vapid gestures.

Let us be clear: we have no objection to decentralizing, extending, or otherwise improving the conversation. We do, however, oppose its infantilization.

In Zeldman we trust.

1. And, if beggars were choosers, things like voting, threading, burying, author highlighting, comment email or RSS subscriptions, etc. There is much room for improvement.

There are still lots of clever and funny things to read every day, but finding these is no longer a challenge – you already follow your sources. Sites like this one now serve mainly as fuel for emotional up-fuckedness in the guise of a game.

Although I never had much luck with Favrd—my most favorited tweets only gathered a handful of stars, the majority coming from fellow Pittsburgher Jason Logue—it undoubtedly sharpened my game. Competing for laughs with the likes of Tim Siedell, Jason Sweeney, and Dan Wineman will have that effect. But while Favrd’s rising tide raised all tweets, it also created the conditions that ultimately forced its demise. What started as a daily bulletin board for Twitter’s funniest quickly mutated into a destination for shameless ego-boosting. This is not a new concept, Favrd just made it quantifiable.

Since I come not only to bury Favrd, but also to praise it, Favrd had another unintended consequence: people became friends. They didn’t “friend” each other, mind you. They became real-life, meatspace friends. And out of this accidental syndicate came tweetups, collaborations, and iPhone apps. It also spawned two, uh, “short films”: SeoulBrother’s two-fisted eff-you to John Gruber and Skyward, Geoff Barnes’ “We Are The World” to the tweet incubator app, Birdhouse—not to mention Birdhouse itself. Not a bad legacy (your move, Favstar).

If you’re looking for a proper eulogy, I’m hardly the person to deliver it. Besides, there are plenty out there already. But I can’t say I’m not gonna miss it. Favrd is dead. Long live Favrd.