I just went back and reread a bunch of the comments on a series of polls on Feedback that I did on LJ from 2003 to 2006 and it's interesting that at that point, when LJ was still fairly new (and DW and AO3 weren't even glimmers in anyone's eye), there was some sense that LJ comments were "less than" an emailed letter of comment, because the ease of "clicking a button" and leaving a few word response was viewed as an inadequate response to an author's work (hmmm. . sounds familiar!). The more things change. . .