Every so often, the discussion regarding comments on weblogs resumes. This week John Gruber got the ball rolling on Daring Fireball. Shawn Blanc and Marco Arment responded in favor of disabling comments. I agree with all three, but my reasons are much simpler:
- Comment management is very time consuming.
- The vast majority of comments detract from the experience of reading a blog.
Management
If all I had to do was respond to constructive comments, I’d keep them enabled. However, when I accepted comments, I spent most of my time repelling spam, adding IPs to blacklists and hitting the delete button. By the way, that’s a war than can never be won. Therefore, it’s a waste of time. As WOPR will tell you, “The only winning move is not to play.”
Trolls
I deal with hundreds of comments per day at TUAW. Many of them are left by thoughtful readers. Many are not. While Marco contends that comments follow a many-to-one model (many commenters converse with one blog author), I say comments are many-to-many. As any database designer will tell you, that’s a no-no.
Comments quickly devolve into an off-topic discussion among the commenters, of which the original post’s author is omitted. That discussion too often mimics the vibe of a junior high school playground. No one is better for it and the blog owner is forced to either ignore it, leaving a mess on their blog, or play referee. I don’t have time for that.
If you want to respond to something I’ve written, do so via email or Twitter. Better yet, write a post on your own blog. For now, comments are closed.
