This month’s in-depth investigation into the state of British music journalism concerns opposite attitudes towards the oft-derided debating forum that is the online comment community

The idea of giving music journalists prizes is obviously ridiculous. Is going to gigs for free with an outside chance of standing next to Everett True not reward enough for these people? The one context in which some measure of formal acclaim might be constructive, however, would be in the category of “best sentence”. From Lester Bangs and Paul Morley to Chuck Eddy and Kodwo Eshun (before he took the silver shillings of academe and the international art world), the true giants of rock writing have traditionally distinguished themselves by their ability to compress an extraordinary amount of cultural elucidation into the interval between a capital letter and a full stop.

Stewart Lee’s recent declaration of occult war on his rival 90s polymath Damon Albarn contained at least two worthy candidates for July 2011’s inaugural Ian Penman Memorial Sentence of the Month award (sponsored by Tipp-Ex. “But imagine Bowie instead as a cunning lichen, an adaptive tuber or a semi-sentient mould, endlessly reshaping himself in search of the moisture of acclaim, and it is easy to understand him” is my favourite. Although the alarming if possibly fallacious suggestion that “Louise Weeners of the Sleeper [sic] is planning a lighthearted chick-lit novel about Ithell Colquhoun and her magic goose” runs it close.

As those Comment is Free respondents who scathingly noted Lee’s in fact humorously intended misidentification of the Witchfinder General as “Mary Hopkin” may finally be realising, the late-night BBC2 comedian’s mis-spelling of the name of the second-rank-Britpop-siren-turned-persistent-literary-wannabe Louise Wener is probably not an accident. Professional music journalists are not generally encouraged to make deliberate mistakes (although there is the odd one who tries to get away with it every now and again out of sheer perversity) but Lee’s unique position – suspended between celebrity super-fan, benevolent critical authority and satirical observer of the absurdities of pop discourse – allows him latitude in this area.

Of course, Stewart Lee would be unlikely to get people’s names wrong for comic effect in one of the scrupulously scholarly Sunday Times record reviews that have established him as News International’s leading authority on extemporised instrumentals. And his recent almost overnight transition from self-styled surly sixth-form common-room existentialist to mini Meltdown-curating pillar of the contemporary cultural establishment does pose an intriguing threat to the strict separation of powers between serious-minded advocate of Dutch free improvisation and wilfully divisive poker of sticks into the hive mind that has served him so well thus far. But why shouldn’t Lee continue to combine the unabashed idealism of the Corinthian enthusiast with the cold-eyed ruthlessness of the professional comedic assassin? Surely it was just such a variety of potentialities that the poet Walt Whitman had in mind when he pioneered the notion of an individual containing multitudes?

The Word message-board is not necessarily the first place you’d look to see Whitman’s dreams of diverse human possibility fulfilled. But the revelation in the magazine’s 174th podcast that the “only active thing” one-time NME sentence-overlord Danny Baker (and a joke Baker once made about the Raincoats in a live review is still regularly cited as one of the finest achievements in all English literature) managed to do in the course of his recent serious illness was make mischievous contributions to that oft-derided debating forum has certainly done wonders for the status of the pseudonymous online contributor.

One participant in the ensuing quest to unmask Baker’s alter ego (which proved mercifully inconclusive, as a positive ID would have spoiled the fun) posited an intriguing idea. Perhaps the prevailing harshness of message-board debate might be mitigated if prior to pressing “submit” on another scourging denunciation of a rival thinker’s ancestral lineage or all-round mental fitness, online contributors could “consider that the person posting might be in complicated circs”. My suggestion is that we symbolically set aside any lingering unease prompted by the use of the abbreviation “circs”, name this commendably humane initiative “Baker’s Law”, and see if it helps us impose some discipline on what Jaron Lanier has resonantly termed our “inner troll”.

Stewart Lee’s alternative to the former Six O’Clock Show presenter’s “If you’re not well enough to beat them, join them” strategy – gathering together all the most savage personal attacks on him in one place in the hope of prompting a collective recalibration of Gordon Brown’s moral compass – certainly seems to have had the opposite effect to the one intended. So rather than dropping a carcass into the shark-tank, why not fit all the sharks with Danny Baker masks and see if that stops them biting each others’ (and, indeed, our) faces?

After all, it can only be a matter of time before the process of anguished self-examination set in train by the News of the World phone-hacking scandal spreads out from the antedeluvian print media into the broader interactive hinterland. And as the decorous new era of content mutualisation dawns, perhaps a day will one day come when 21st-century opinion-formers no longer need to view a violently hostile reception from the online comment community as a badge of honour. In the meantime, Lee’s determination to continue biting the hand that feeds him – whether that hand is his own or Michael McIntyre’s – will continue to be an inspiration to those who believe rigorous self-regulation can still transcend the discipline of the virtual lynch-mob.