Have You Disabled Comments?

This topic (choosing to disable comments on your blog) came up on CMF forums from Ben Barden.

I blogged without allowing comments for a couple of years. I was just writing for myself. The blog was just for me to journal, create backgrounds and play with code. I knew I had some readers, some of them I knew from other places online. Most of them were from a couple of network sites which I wrote for at the time. I finally allowed comments when a couple of friends asked me to. (It was easier for them to jump in with a note rather than go back to the other site and leave a note there).

Disabling comments does not seem a big deal to me. Not because I don’t get flooded with them but because it is kind of nice to be blogging in silence sometimes. Peaceful to just hear your own thoughts and really, totally just write and create to please yourself, no pressure about what some anonymous reader thinks. Even though it is there for others to read you don’t have to trim your thoughts to please them or consider what they will think if you suddenly decide to indulge in a grand pity party for yourself. I could have made it a private blog but posting for anonymous readers (who may or may not read it) suited me in some odd way. Like talking to a stranger I guess.

I think of comments as an outlet for readers. If I post a contact link I don’t think comments are a necessity. Comments have become a trend. There were blogs before there were comments. There are blogs that restrict comments with so much verification that the comments may as well be turned off. I’m only going to jump through one hoop before I decide not to leave a comment. So, in that case, are the comments not turned off just as much as the person who actually does turn them off?

Tagged as: comments, web writing, writing