[meta] Coordination of effort on comment module improvements

There are a lot of competing issues around changes to comment module, especially around settings and comment defaults.
Here is a small sampling from the issue queue:
#45188: disabling comments does not work
#190471: Bring back a global default comments settings page.
#448386: Only show all comment settings when not disabled
#504230: Turning off comments does not work
#640036: Master comment settings and comment setting inheritance
#731724: Convert comment settings into a field to make them work with CMI and non-node entities
#737308: Disabling comments for a specific content should give an option to disable comments on existing items of that type as well.
#827302: Set default comment setting to disable when creating new content type in module
#938802: hide(?) additional comment settings when comments are disabled on a content type
#989452: Make comment settings form more usable
#1090440: Can't disable comments for a node type, has no effect
#1397282: Set comment #default_value to 'Hidden' for new node types
#1660472: Comment permissions per specific content type

There is confusion about how settings on the node type form apply to existing content.
There is confusion about why settings on the node type form do not match those on the node form.
There is confusion about why comment module forces itself upon all node types, when Drupal best practices advise against doing so.
There are lots of other issues with comment module, but I think improvements in this area are low hanging fruits.
I think there should be some coordination of effort around improving comments, rather than attacking these problems piecemeal.