Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment.  I guess my short answer would be the rate and review of comments changes everything.  Rayt isn't so much a commenting program as a way for the Public (yes, with a capital P) to express their opinion about a site. 

Rayt comments would be many times better than those of any other commenting plugin because you only see the comments that other people think are interesting, cutting out the "lol yahoo sux" comments pretty quickly and leaving the comments that make fair criticisms about Yahoo's shady activities in China (for example). 

Rayt is about community, about people defining the internet with and for each other rather than passively accepting the information presented to them.  That is why we call it The Real Web 2.0, 

I'd be more than happy to discuss further if you are still not convinced.  My e-mail address is MaryCJoyce AT gmail DOT com.

Best,

Mary 

Indeed, making another would worsen the real problem, which is that the comments and the audiences for the comments are divided over several different networks.

The article below includes a fairly comprehensive list of Rayt-like services.

http://woofiegrrl.livejournal.com/1036321.html

In my opinion the best possible function of Rayt would be to query all these disparate services and display/distribute comments to all of them.

I'd also advice displaying comments not in a marquee but in a collapsible comment-thread with a familiar design, similar to those used on blogs. The greatest victory for the service would be if people one day stopped installing their own comments systems on their sites, instead relying on the public comment services to provide a forum.

User-based rating systems similar to slashdot to hide mindless vandalism and make intelligent comments more visible would be another important feature.