And another person turns off comments. If you come to this site, you’ll clearly see I still have them on. Most people don’t use them. I’ve rarely encountered the assholes of which Justin speaks, and I never deal with the spam. Akismet takes care of it for me so I don’t even have to worry about it.
One thing I have noticed is that comments have become fewer and further between. Like he says, people talk about the content elsewhere. Or, maybe they just fav a Tweet or like a Facebook post and say nothing.
I vote for the latter two options.
People are lazy. Making a comment, or gasp as Justin says, writing your own response post is too much work for so many. It’s easier to read a title and then dash off a click as a vote of support and move on to consuming some other click bait content.
I’m keep comments up, unless they become a problem.
4 responses to “Justin Tadlock Turns off Comments”
Commenting on blogs used to be an enjoyable experience that I miss.
I am just as guilty as others. I don’t comment often either.
Why? I think the conversation happens elsewhere. Social Media has removed the social from blogs and articles. In fact, I think social media is major reason why individual blogs are so rare. I rarely write in public. My blogs are stale. The habit of writing at Twitter or Facebook has replaced the blog and the comments.
Also, unfortunately, too often, there are too many anonymous trolls.
Cheers for keeping the comments alive.
I do less and less on social media. In part because of all the algorithm stuff, but I also find that there is less interaction there as well. People broadcast but don’t engage.
Comments will stay open here until it becomes a problem. Then I’ll try to figure out what to do.
Are you going to start engaging more again?
I wish Akismet handled all my spam. 🙂
Ultimately, I think the biggest factor that pushed me to make the change was that so much of the interaction happens on social networks. That’s OK with me. Plus, I always keep my email public for folks who want to discuss things.
Anyway, this is going to be an interesting experiment. It’s been a great many years since I’ve not had a commenting system.
Most of my interaction doesn’t happen on social media now. While I haven’t deleted accounts I use them very little.
I wonder if you will see many emails as responses?