Over the years I've left a couple hundred comments on Jezebel and TheRoot. I'd say a third or so have gotten ungreyed — almost exclusively replies on existing threads that have been either approved or replied to by the author of the parent comment, in the same mechanism as RadioPaper.
Gawker staff used to participate in the comments, but those days are long gone. That means that a top-level comment by anybody who isn't already pre-approved will almost certainly remain in the greys.
I miss the way it was, but the Gawker properties have gone through multiple wringers.
So I agree that the Gawker properties have serious problems, but I think that the commenting mechanism actually yields some pretty great results. It would be fab if Radiopaper could iterate and improve on that model!