I've never understood why people have to stay in their cars during car washes. I'm no expert, but it seems like it would be quite simple to automate the process. Perhaps it is simple to do, but car wash companies haven't bothered to do it.
I've read that most DuckDuckGo employees work remotely. Not to increase productivity, but because DuckDuckGo recruits members of the community and they tend to be from all around the world.
The people they recruit often can't move to near their offices right away or at all, so they simply work remotely.
One of the main reasons people use Medium is that their posts will be viewed by random Medium users in addition to their own fan base, thus growing their fan base and getting more views both in the short and long term.
I'd compare it to YouTube. People could theoretically host their own videos, but the main reason people use YouTube is because it is so much easier for others to discover your videos.
Also, +1 on using Linode! Have had multiple projects on their servers. No downtime at one point for over 365 days.
I think that would only hinder conversation. The original idea of questions also seems dumb to me, since it feels like even many good posters who actually read the article would be too lazy to answer the questions, and if there was another comment section which didn't require answering questions, they'd just post in there. It also seems like having two comment sections would divide the conversation.
It seems Discord is in the early stages of something like this. They have dozens of employees and a pre-money valuation of 725 million US dollars. However, very few users are buying their premium service, with most saying it isn't worth it, with this paid version only coming out a year after the release of Discord.
I'd probably start using it right now if it was already available for Android.