I thought this was supposed to be one of the great equalizers of the Internet. Anyone and everyone can publish, and sometimes it seems like they do!

There does become a price burden if you become too popular of course, so at some point you either have to make money or your rise comes to a halt.

Looking back at slashdot, they had numerous times before they got bought by OSDN that they were on the verge of collapse. But enough of the economics of the problem, that isn't the crux of your argument.

If you play in a forum that is outside of your control then you are always at a disadvantage. Comments in a weblog or on a "community" site like slashdot are, I feel, horrid ways of conducting an exchange of ideas. Brad Templeton was just talking about how he longed for the days of USENET for discussion. Now of course Brad may be a tiny bit biased towards USENET, but in general I agree with him. And yet, here I am...posting comments in a weblog.

Solutions? I don't have any.

The sad point is that it's only an "equalizer" in the sense of "some are more equal than others" :-(