The Trouble with Comments

I haven’t had comments on this site for quite a few years — I can’t remember when I made the switch, probably around the early 2010s, but it was a reaction to the constant battle against spam, as well as noticing that comments on the site were getting lower, and I figured that feedback could be better given on Twitter or Facebook, or via email.

When I brought back the old archives to the site this past weekend, along with them came all the comments, and I thought not only would it be fun to keep all those comments there, I also decided to just leave comments open on all posts, and see what would happen.

Spam. Lots of it.

It didn’t take long before my email inbox got filled with notifications of the comment spam that was overloading the site.

Result? Bye bye comments.

I think that in the past 5-6 years, the trend for sites to remove comments on posts/articles has continued. I made the right choice then, and there’s no reason to go back on it, even if I did find a better spam fighter.