Top Ten Reasons I Closed Comments on this Blog

by Ben Atlas on 12.8.2009.10:42am · 0 comments

  1. Virtually all online communities are forum outlets superimposed on real groups or tribes, providing a conversational release to an existing culture. I don’t aspire to mirror any group-think.
  2. Emotional reactions, the “likes”, LOLs, “that was greats”, etc., bore me (see What is there to like on the Internet?).
  3. I have spoken on numerous occasions against anonymity on the Internet and especially against the changing handles. Anonymity is a conversational disease. I am not interested in talking to ghosts (see The Plague of the Internet Anonymity).
  4. Facebook and Twitter and the Social Media in general are drastically changing the dynamics of comments. People are less inclined to post a coherent paragraph, instead they comment in a few syllables or at most a sentence. Often people link to a post but continue the conversation on a platform where the link originated.
  5. I remain approachable via email, the platforms and even in real life.
  6. Akismet catches all of the spam, but the ongoing ritual of cleaning up the garbage is annoying.
  7. The posts I write are too advanced for most, I rarely get a comment or a feedback that is worth the engagement.
  8. I write to sort my own ideas and have zero expectation to the reward or understanding. I actually don’t need it. And I don’t care that much about the stats. Perhaps this is the reason why the readership is growing.
  9. Comments slow down the site and clutter the database. All commenting plugins that I tried, and I tried them all, are flawed.
  10. I might change my mind on this in the future.
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