So the first person to leave a comment on a Gawker network post will now be in charge of policing the thread of commenters who reply, maintaining a high level of discussion and recruiting other voices to participate and bring more page views. And there will be multiple comment moderators and threads per post. Free labor!

In a conversation with longtime blogger Anil Dash, Denton said he’s tried throughout his entrepreneurial career at Moreover and Gawker to cultivate good conversations online, at scale. Lots of things haven’t worked.

For instance, the gamification of comments — basically, giving people badges for repeat participation — were a wrong turn, because they encourage insular communities and aren’t a motivator for the most interesting people.

And while Facebook’s embedded comment system might help control for blog-comment trolls on sites like TechCrunch, Denton said, it makes conversations more boring by discouraging new and anonymous commenters. Those people often share the juiciest information.

“The most interesting comments, they don’t come from people with Klout scores. They don’t come from people with a history on our sites,” Denton said.

The ultimate goal of the new system, Denton said, would be to attract people like American Apparel’s Dov Charney or NBC’s Brian Williams — who are at the center of news on Gawker sites — to chime in themselves.

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Can you please have the post of Brian Williams’ email to Nick Denton taken down immediately? That was sent in confidence as friends and absolutely never intended to be public. A speedy removal would go a long way in maintaining the trust and respect we have for your site.

– An email from NBC’s PR department requesting that Gawker take down its posting of an email from Brian Williams to Nick Denton, criticizing, among other things, the site’s recently reduced postings on the weekends; the request was added to the original post

(This, by the way, is a good time to point out that the media love stories like Chatroulette, because they require nothing more than visiting a Web site. Bear this in mind when you see the next story about Twitter, Facebook, or whatever.)

Warning: Stewart’s clip, like Chatroulette, may not be safe for work, depending on the kind of place you work. But given that media grandees like Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer and Katie Couric found it fit to participate, you should probably be okay. And you should definitely watch it, somewhere.

Portfolio.com media blogger Jeff Bercovici posted a short item about one of the panels yesterday afternoon; later that evening, the story had disappeared.

It should never have run in the first place, Portfolio.com managing editor Daniel Colarusso tells me. That’s because Portfolio magazine was a sponsor of the event (editor in chief Joanne Lipman moderated one panel; Washington editor Matt Cooper moderated the one that Bercovici wrote about) and is honoring its no-press rules.

Again, it’s Quadrangle’s conference, and they can run it however they’d like. But it seems particularly ironic that the one story that did get published, then pulled, was about a panel of professional communicators: CBS (CBS) news anchor Katie Couric, NBC anchor Brian Williams and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

Some MediaMemo readers have asked me to reprint all of Bercovici’s story, but I don’t have access to it. I can tell you, however, that is a very short story–maybe three or four paragraphs long–and that the text I quoted yesterday was the most interesting part. Here it is again:

Couric shed some light on her preparation for the interviews: Beforehand, she sought advice from former senator Sam Nunn and Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haas. They told her to draw Palin out on her geopolitical worldview and urged her to let the governor speak at length without interrupting her. Maybe she should bring them along with her when she takes over at Meet the Press?”

Meanwhile, Quadrangle really has bigger problems on its mind these days than unauthorized blog posts. It is shutting down its media hedge fund after sustaining losses of 25 percent year-to-date.

So who said what at Quadrangle’s Foursquare conference, and was any of it interesting?

You got me. The media and tech confab is off the record. And so far, the members of the fourth estate who attended the event yesterday seem to be keeping their mouths shut.

But I did talk briefly with an attendee, who told me that the most interesting panel was the one that Portfolio’s Matt Cooper conducted this afternoon with television personalities Katie Couric, Brian Williams and George Stephanopoulos.

That would be an interesting group under any circumstance, but even more so since Couric’s interview of Republican VP candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin for CBS (CBS) is now considered to be a turning point in the 2008 election.

And while Couric hasn’t talked publicly about the interviews yet, she apparently did dish a bit today, according to a source who talked to Portfolio.com’s Jeff Bercovici:

Couric shed some light on her preparation for the interviews: Beforehand, she sought advice from former senator Sam Nunn and Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haas. They told her to draw Palin out on her geopolitical worldview and urged her to let the governor speak at length without interrupting her. Maybe she should bring them along with her when she takes over at Meet the Press?”

UPDATE: Bercovici’s report has been pulled. Details here.

One newsworthy item not covered in Bercovici’s account: After the event, Couric gave Twitter correspondent MC Hammer a smooch, which was apparently well-received.

And who knows? Maybe John Chambers, Steve Ballmer and Brian Roberts will indeed say something important today and tomorrow at Quadrangle’s Foursquare conference. Chrysler’s Robert Nardelli is speaking too. He might have something newsworthy to say.

But you are unlikely to read about it.

That’s because there’s no press allowed at the private equity shop’s annual conference, which starts this afternoon at New York’s Plaza Hotel.

Or rather, there’s some press at the event. But they’ll be on stage. And they won’t be telling their readers and listeners what they saw and heard.

CNBC’s David Faber, Becky Quick and Maria Bartiromo, for instance, will be moderating panels over the next few days. So will the New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin. And network TV news bigshots Katie Couric, George Stephanopoulos and Brian Williams will answer questions themselves (Portfolio’s Matt Cooper will be moderating that one).

Am I crabby because I asked (nicely) and couldn’t get in myself? Nah. It’s Quadrangle’s event, and they can run it any way they want. But it does look like a pretty good gathering of worthies. Maybe I’ll park myself in the Plaza’s lobby and see if I can bump into some of them.

Want to join me? Here’s the agenda for next two days:

Tuesday 11/11
2:00 PM WELCOME
Joshua L. Steiner (Quadrangle)

ONE ON ONE WITH JOHN CHAMBERS (Cisco)
Moderated by Jim Citrin (Spencer Stuart)

WHO DO YOU TRUST: INFORMATION AND NEWS IN AN  OPEN WORLD
Tom Glocer (Thomson Reuters), Nancy McKinstry (Wolters Kluwer) and Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook)
Moderated by David Faber (CNBC)

ALL ABOUT WIRELESS
Jean-Bernard Lévy (Vivendi), Naguib Sawiris (Orascom Telecom) and Ben Wolff (Clearwire)
Moderated by Steven Rattner

4:15 PM BREAK

GOING IT ALONE IN AN INTERCONNECTED WORLD
Philippe Dauman (Viacom), Charlie Ergen (EchoStar) and Robert Kotick (Activision)
Moderated by Becky Quick (CNBC)

GLOBAL E-COMMERCE: $500 BILLION AND GROWING
Barry Diller (IAC) and Hiroshi Mikitani (Rakuten)
Moderated by Steve Hasker (McKinsey)

6:15 PM COCKTAIL RECEPTION
Grand Ballroom Foyer
The Plaza

Wednesday 11/12
8:30 AM WELCOME
ONE ON ONE WITH STEVE BALLMER (Microsoft)
Moderated by Ken Auletta (The New Yorker)

INNOVATION AND THE NEXT BIG IDEA
Jean-François Decaux (JC Decaux) Robert Stephens (Geek Squad founder?) and Jim Wiatt (William Morris)
Moderated by Andrew Ross Sorkin (New York Times)

A CONVERSATION WITH SAM ZELL (Equity Group, Tribune Co.)
Moderated by Joanne Lipman (Portfolio)

10:00 AM BREAK

COOP-ER-TITION: A CONVERSATION WITH PETER CHERNIN (News Corp.) AND BRIAN ROBERTS (Comcast)
Moderated by Ken Auletta

REBUILDING A BRAND FROM THE TOP DOWN
Dan Hesse (Sprint) and Robert Nardelli (Chrysler)
Moderated by Maria Bartiromo

NOON Concluding Luncheon
CAMPAIGN 2008: IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA AND BEHIND THE SCENES
Katie Couric (CBS), George Stephanopoulos (ABC) and Brian Williams (NBC)
Moderated by Matt Cooper (Portfolio)

[Image Credit: PinkMoose]