Seriously? I like the idea of Slatest, though I don't think it effectively replaces Today's Papers as a conceptual way to string together the top news stories of the morning and give a strong understanding of the news cycle. But I strongly dislike that the only way to comment on these news stories is through one's Facebook account, stripping the commenter of an important level of pseudonymity. Why on earth would I want my high school girlfriend to know my thoughts on Bernake's re-appointment? Why would I want any of my thoughts or interactions with Slate reflected on Facebook period, or allow some jerk I got in an argument with in some comment thread to be able to follow me back to Facebook, which will have real information about me?

Bad call, Slate. Bad freaking call. Also, your links to the individual articles didn't work in the email I received this morning, which was very annoying. They worked in the afternoon edition, but that should have been checked before it was sent out. I wish I were as impressed with Slatest as I was when I first read about it.

I just posted about the loss of anonymity in reply to a poster below.

I have a Facebook account, only because my employer requires it.

I have NO WISH to expose any personally identifiable information about myself to pretty much anyone on The Fray and especially not to the insane rightwingnutswithgunsandattitu­de who post here.

And thanks for pointing out the broken links in the emails...

New concept but I agree a bad idea to use face book which I do not.

I will miss you Slate.

I have no desire to add a face to my name either. Nor do I want any employer or associate to see my political views or occasional rants.

Hands down the stupidest move for SLate.

I may be wrong, but I believe you have various ways to control who sees what you do on Facebook. So, there you go.

Besides that, I think it's a somewhat small attempt to hold people accountable for the batshit and/or contemptable things they say to others online. That may have the added benefit of, say, possibly preventing someone like Island Muffin from getting laid. Chalk those blueballs up to another Obama conspiracy!

Another problem is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to post a comment to the Fray on almost anything that Slate offers.

The Root, XX and now Slatest all require you to register with another site, or use your facebook account, or jump through one or another hoops to comment. Less and less of what used to be "Slate" content is actually contained in Slate -- it's contained in something else, and if you're not a member of the "something else," you don't get to comment.

And, as a right-wing guy with a house full of guns, I don't want to give up my anonymity to the gun controllers, either.

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As a liberal, I don't want my identity exposed to the other side, either. In fact, I think few of us would want our employers or families to know how we carry on. So we are together on this one.

Besides that, I think it's a somewhat small attempt to hold people accountable for the batshit and/or contemptable things they say to others online.

If that has even a grain of truth, then I rebel against it further. If you're going to open commentary on your content, and then try to control the commentary through identity politics, any incentive to provide commentary (for myself, anyway) is entirely stripped. By controlling the nature of the commentary, by assosciating one's name with one's comment (which anyone who has grown up with the internet as both a tool and a weapon will tell you is a bad, bad idea), the ability to articulate freely one's opinion without sanction is stripped. The internet is an anarchy, a generally faceless, lurkery mass of people, and by trying to impose some level of unchecked "accountability" through Facebook identity politics the quality of discussion is undoubtedly lowered.

Sure, people say batshit crazy things online. But just as many people post articulate, intelligent thoughts associated with non-invasive usernames that do not compromise their personal identiy or personal lives. Slate undoubtedly has a firm of lawyers to protect the rights of their columnists. If they choose to retain commentary, then we, the psuedonomic mass of lurkers who respond here, freely, voluntarily, must retain the one tool we have in the face of similar loss of rights: the right to use an alias to express our opinion.