Each week, a reader comment per day is selected for inclusion and veneration in the Gold Star Motel. Standards of excellence are arbitrary, fluid, and contradictory. The reward is strictly honorary (at best). This week:

As part of our commenting initiatives, we periodically reiterate for novice and senile readers the way our glorious commenting perestroika works. "How," you ask, "can I become a member of exclusive, rarefied star chamber known as the Gawker commenting community?" (Besides sneaking past our invincible defenses, of course.)

The road to receiving an invitation to comment on Gawker is an arduous one, demanding wit, favor, or personal friendship with Gawker administrators. Alternately, you could talk to this guy, who's giving them away like candy.

Madona has a heart of gold. If majority of people can keep house pets & treat them like family members, then what's wrong adopting Malawian boy, David Banda.

Apparently immune to self-inflicted irony, BusinessWeek's online division has launched an Orwellian campaign to catch an internal leaker, while publishing a Halloween-themed article entitled "Scary Co-Workers." After all, "who hasn't indulged in the guilty pleasure of office scuttlebutt with a Gossip, or been marginally entertained by The Pessimist's conspiracy theories?" BW management has done neither, apparently. The personhunt has been launched to track down who leaked internal emails relating to speculation about the identity of a commenter ("Martin Smithers") who habitually and suspiciously praises the mag to the heavens. We hear that a "forensic audit" of emails has been ordered to figure out whence the leak sprung, and all IMs will now be surveilled. An even stranger rumor has boss Kathy Rebello hiring some sort of prose expert to compare the writing of employees versus that of the leaker, thus snaring the perpetrator in some kind of Da Vinci Code literary trap. Perhaps now is the time to report to the public square for a voluntary self-criticism session, before it becomes mandatory.

Things seem to be going swimmingly for Gawker editor Alex Balk over at Deadspin, don't you agree? Around here, we're quite accustomed to (a) calling people gay, (b) calling people homophobes, (c) being called reverse-homophobic for projecting homophobia onto others, and (d) being gay, but it's nice to see the same cycle holding true throughout the land. In addition to welcoming the various Deadspin commenters who've seen fit to visit, we commend those Gawker commenters who've made the reverse commute. And yes, we admit that our banning finger may have twitched more than usual today. Normally we would be all too eager to commence the next round of commenter executions, but that would be terribly inhospitable. Plus, unlike some, we try not to shit where we eat. So go nuts — other than instant death for standard troll/spam behavior, no commenter will be banned for anything said until Balk finishes out his sentence at Deadspin. To put it another way: Do your worst. We aint' a-scared of you.

Each week, a reader comment per day is selected for inclusion and veneration in the Gold Star Motel. Standards of excellence are arbitrary, fluid, and contradictory. The reward is strictly honorary (at best). This week:

We hear that after a recent redesign of the story pages, the level of reader commentary at BusinessWeek's site has dropped precipitously, whether for technical or aesthetic reasons. This prompted exec editor Kathy Rebello to perform some field tests:

^{Each week, a reader comment per day is selected for inclusion and veneration in the Gold Star Motel. Standards of excellence are arbitrary, fluid, and contradictory. The reward is strictly honorary (at best). This week:}

As part of our commenting initiatives, we periodically reiterate for novice and senile readers the way our glorious commenting perestroika works. "How," you ask, "can I become a member of exclusive, rarefied star chamber known as the Gawker commenting community?"

We'd like to mention that these regular culls do seem to be having an overall positive effect. Granted, we are merely chipping off the very point of the tip of the massive iceberg of commenters, but for the very first time, we actually had to consider for a moment who should get the ax. Only for a very brief moment, mind you, but that's a sea change from having to decide among dozens of killworthy nominees. For those of you still alive, keep up the great work. Enough with the carrot; time for the stick.

^{Each week, a reader comment per day is selected for inclusion and veneration in the Gold Star Motel. Standards of excellence are arbitrary, fluid, and contradictory. The reward is strictly honorary (at best). This week:}

Each week, a reader comment per day is selected for inclusion and veneration in the Gold Star Motel. Standards of excellence are arbitrary, fluid, and contradictory. The reward is strictly honorary (at best). This week:

As part of our commenting initiatives, we periodically reiterate for novice and senile readers the way our glorious commenting perestroika works. "How," you ask, "can I become a member of exclusive, rarefied star chamber known as the Gawker commenting community?"

Welcome back to the comment execution terrordrome. Before we start chopping, some small advice — patience. Sometimes your comments are posted immediately. Sometimes it may take the system a few moments to digest your comment, once saved. No need to madly repaste your comment and save again, resulting in the public shame of a double-posted comment. We wouldn't be so cruel as to execute for such, but then, we've been punished for our forbearance in the past. Things could change. Meanwhile, the names of the dead:

We may be quick with the commenter executions, but wouldn't it be nice if we could assign little gold stars to those commenters and comments we actually like? Sure would! Won't ever happen — how are we supposed to monetize that? — but instead such laudable comments will receive specious praise and a night in the entirely metaphorical but nevertheless seedy Gold Star Motel. One comment per day from the foregoing week gets the star treatment:

As part of our new commenting initiatives, we'd like to reiterate for novice and senile readers the way our glorious commenting perestroika works these days. "How," you ask, "can I become a member of exclusive, rarefied star chamber known as the Gawker commenting community?"

Thought we'd wait a bit on this, right? The last bloodbath was comparatively recent, but as the comment village expands, so doth comment villainy. On a side note, we believe we've finally gotten that whole avatar graphic thing worked out properly, so go ahead and re-upload your personally visual witticism by clicking "Edit My User Profile" at the bottom of any Gawker post. Now, on to the banny goodness.

Every commenter on Gawker
Has their individual shtick
Tho' there's one particular talker
On whose name we'll always click

Most of you cool kids have already heard about our new commenting features — individual commenter homepages, avatar graphics, and perpetual comment tryouts for those still locked out in the non-commenting cold. If you haven't yet checked out the new toys, please, oh please, do. Note that comment avatars are actually 32 by 32 enormously sexy pixels, not 16 by 16 as originally reported. Note also that if you're seeing "Image by hotsnack" or similar error message instead of your avatar, it means your image file didn't get properly digested. Regular, friendly JPEG or GIF files should be used in all cases. If you experience further problems with the avatars or any other comment features, let send us an email describing the problem, plus your browser (and version) and operating system (and version), to tips@gawker.com.