There are parts in django.contrib.comments that just don't look like it's fully coded. One thing that springs to mind is the support for extra_kwargs in the CommentListNode? class, which is missing any way of passing this from the DoCommentList? function - you can't create any extra_kwargs. Another is the approved and is_public bools that are avaialable, but never tested (I think at least the is_public should be taken into account with the get_comment_count and get_comment_list tags). Then there is the fact that the CommentListNode? class allows extra_kwargs, but the CommentCountNode? doesn't - so even if the tags would allow to pass additional keyword arguments for lookup, the list would respect them, while the count wouldn't.
Maybe this should be fleshed out a bit more before 1.0 ;-)