It was basically the very first shot at a curated message board in the newspaper. Writers unaffiliated with the newspaper were invited to share their opinions on topics "opposite the editorial page". Other papers adopted it after the fact.

So yeah, it's an invite-only comments section. You only ever hear about the fucking horrible ones because you probably don't read the NYT cover to cover every edition.

There's examples of the opposite as well:

https://www.jpost.com/international/article-896131

I'm just pointing out that it's a tool explicitly used to basically say "This is what people not affiliated with our newspaper are saying".

My point is that the NYT should absolutely be saying this themselves, not in an opinion article.