Jim DeRogatis: I think that “ways that weren’t possible in the past” thing is overexaggerated. Before the serious onset of online communications, say mid-’90s, I got tons of phone calls and letters. Now I get those same comments as e-mails. But the feedback and the greater “conversation” with readers has always been there.

Kris Vire: You don’t interact with readers more than you did ten years ago, Jim? I think people are far more likely to shoot off an easy, anonymous comment than go to the trouble of a letter to the editor.

Jim DeRogatis: I can honestly say that only the mode of delivery has changed in terms of the amount of interaction. Used to be letters and calls. Now it’s e-mail. And I’ve always taken hostile (and a few positive) calls on the radio show.

Sam Jones: Right—letters to the editor, call-in shows—same stuff we’re talking about now, only it’s easier.

Nathan Rabin: Before we had comments on the A.V. Club, readers were more of an abstraction. The fact that they can participate in the conversation makes them seem a lot more real, even with fake names and personas and all the other artifice of the Internet.

Don Hall: I like the comments from readers. I like it when they call me an ass. I get a lot of angry e-mails—I try to answer them. The debate is the “sharpening stone.”

Chuck Sudo: Comments can be a dual-edged sword, though. One or two ringers in the bunch and all of a sudden you develop an echo-chamber effect that takes over the original intent of your writing.

Anne Holub: I think you can run a risk of flame wars on the Web that can get out of control. Kind of like a schoolyard brawl. It’s dangerously anonymous at times.

Donna Seaman: Yes, cloaked responses can be thuggish.

Jim DeRogatis: My experience with critical e-mailers is that when you write them back, they instantly back off. They have no expectation of anyone on the other end ever actually reading what they wrote, much less thinking about and responding to it.

Sam Jones: Getting criticized in public—even in a comment on my blog that most people won’t see—is way different than getting an e-mail.

Donna Seaman: Agreed. Does it take courage to be a critic?

Don Hall: Courage? Only if you’re criticizing the powerful.

Nathan Rabin: I think the anonymity of the blogosphere encourages many of the worst instincts in readers. It’s like an old horror movie where the hero discovers invisibility and instantly turns into a bank-robbing heavy.

Anne Holub: Anonymity and a lack of true discipline. If they’re bad…what are you going to do about it? It’s all going to be encrypted and editor-approved comments soon.

Chuck Sudo: Comment moderation is becoming more the norm, from experience.

Nathan Rabin: It’s not such a Wild West situation anymore.

Jim DeRogatis: The problem is the professional critic is not invisible. Our pictures and our real identities are out there. So yes, courage is required. And it’s even scarier to do reporting in this new world. I mean, I got shot at during the R. Kelly reporting!

Chuck Sudo: Literally?

Jim DeRogatis: Bullet. Window.

Kris Vire: Cripes.

Jim DeRogatis: My wife hates me for this, but I still insist on being listed in the phone book. I mean, we are not doing our job if we’re not accessible to people.

Nathan Rabin: Now would probably be a foolish time to admit it, but I was the one doing the shooting. C’mon, doesn’t the “Ignition Remix” make everything forgivable?

Sam Jones: [Laughs]

Nathan Rabin: Not to mention “Trapped in the Closet” Volumes 1–749.

Jim DeRogatis: You just have a thing for midget sex, Nathan. See, everything on the Web eventually turns back into porn!

Don Hall: So is it courage or just a stubborn need to express our opinion?

Donna Seaman: I think it’s the latter. I try not to think about anything except the work at hand.

Kris Vire: I envy our food critics’ anonymity sometimes...

Sam Jones: I don’t think I’d write anything if I weren’t anonymous. I didn’t even realize I was thinking about all this stuff until I had a pseudonym. :)

Nathan Rabin: It’s funny, my dad always says, “You’re so brave to put yourself out there. I mean people could tear apart everything you say,” but I never think about it that way. If I did I’d have a hard time to putting anything to page.

Jim DeRogatis: I envy food critics their vocabulary. I always say a great food critic could write 5,000 words about the taste of a glass of milk. I wish I could do that.

Mike Sula: Hey—that’s my next column!

Jim DeRogatis: It’s much easier to write about “Trapped in the Closet.”

Donna Seaman: Jim, you could, you could.

Jim DeRogatis: Well, maybe if Home Depot doesn’t work, I will, I will, Donna.

Sam Jones: I did the Lettuce mystery diner program, and I don’t envy food writers anymore. Only so many words for “good salad.”

Kris Vire: Well Jim, I think we all have a heightened vocabulary within our disciplines. I mean, I could never write about dance, you know?

Donna Seaman: You're all too modest. We should switch beats.

Jim DeRogatis: I suppose. I can never forget the Matt Groening [former rock critic] cartoon, pre-Simpsons, about words rock critics should never use: Seminal. Incendiary. Sophomore album. Etc.

Mike Sula: To die for.

Anne Holub: Want an extended vocabulary? Look at sports writing. They’ve found a million ways to say “blank beat blank.”

Nathan Rabin: As a hip-hop writer I have a hard time finding new ways to say, “This album’s way too long, uneven and could use fresher subject matter.” That pretty much applies to 70 percent of hip-hop releases.