I paused before typing DBW, and decided that yes, the context was clear enough that I could use it. But nooooo, now you had to bring in deadbrowalking. ;-)

I agree that random-member and OP have somewhat different responsibilities on a given post, but I'm not sure I agree that the differences are as huge as all that. Assuming the original post was sound (which isn't a trivial assumption, I acknowledge), the OP basically gets timely notification of what comments are being made, and that's it. (On DBW you're not going to use your other OP powers, such as freezing threads. I don't think. That opens the same can of worms as screening posts.)

I dunno. I'm still not convinced that I shouldn't be watching older posts more closely, to at least see if comment-counts are ballooning. (Although "ballooning" itself is kinda late in the game -- someone is already getting schooled, and has been for a while.)