All The World's A Democracy

Recently I've noticed that the ESPN website, among others, has been allowing comments on most of their stories.  At first, I thought this was a pretty neat feature, but once I began to read through the comments, it was pretty disappointing.

Overall, the comments seem to be of little value to me.  A good number of the commenters can't spell, don't make any sense, and seem to be more concerned with battling other commenters than saying anything worthwhile.  How does this add any value to reader of these stories?  Isn't that point of having a professional news website, is that you hire professionals to write intelligently about events?

For any news organization or website, either the stories are worth reading or they're not.  Giving someone the opportunity to air their half-baked opinion doesn't make the stories any better.