I hear what you say about making things overall better as a whole. Probably depends on the direction you want to take SN, which we ourselves have no grand vision insights into. If the lack of easy to use bolds and underlines turns people off, then twitter would never have taken off.

I'm arm chairing here but build something people want despite a comment box being one way or another. I'm curious where the users are in this thread that have been waiting for this. Perhaps they don't know how to comment because it's using the old editor here.