While I've so far certainly been aiming at - and not entirely reaching - the ideal of developed texts and sustained argumentation, I've also been thinking that this is not the only way we can make exciting headway on here. The essay form (which is was I assume you are basically describing) is one thing, but you have to ask why an essay would go on here and not, for example, in a printed publication.

Here we have possibilities for ways of writing that printed matter doesn't offer, so we have no obligation to follow its traditional forms. 'Collaborative authorship' for me doesn't have to mean a single, long, structured, single-voiced text with three or four names after it (though I have nothing against that). If the comment-conversation that follows a text is lively, considered, and concise enough, this is also completely appropriate for the goal of 'collaborative authorship'.

So I'd agree we need more sustained arguments, but I would prefer to see greater involvement and conversation following something maybe a little unfinished or uncertain, than several 'perfect' texts sitting all alone amongst no conversation. Essentially I think this means we need to pay more attention to the status of comments and see them as part of the fabric of a collaborative text, rather than as the secondary noise around a finished essay.

in fact i began a post about this, and abandoned it. Maybe it's time to dust it off again.