I reject categorically the idea that you should let other people control your time and attention. What you chose to spend your time on is among the most important decisions that you can make.
If you find reading other people's comments fulfilling (either on your own site or on sites that you visit), that's awesome.
I tend not to read comments on any site that has them. I consider sites like HN which exist solely for comments an exception. If I had a blog, I certainly wouldn't let other people comment on it. I suppose this means there's a chance I might miss out on some really enlightening comment that someone makes. Based on ~20 years of reading comments on the internet, I'm willing to take that chance.
It might just be my innate negative reaction to someone telling people what to do, but listening to someone make bullshit blanket statements about how you should spend your time pisses me off (although at least he said "please").
As I mentioned in the article, it's like saying "please read the Wikipedia citations". You can get plenty of benefit from the main Wikipedia article itself, but it's nice when the comments are sane and contain signal, as they can help you drill down into the claims of the article and evaluate them.
It is definitely optional, comments are like annotations to the article.
Counterpoint: sometimes I skip to the HN comments before reading the linked URL to see if there are any major problems / concerns / flaws in the article. Kind of conceptually the same way people use Amazon user reviews when determining if they want to buy a product or not. Crowdsourcing credibility..
The manufacturer (writer) tells one story, the consumers (readers) may tell another. If you want the bigger picture, it is nice to consider both. But you're right that a well written article should stand on its own, the comments shouldn't be necessary to complete the article.
I agree completely. I put my phone number and email address on my web site, then I don't enable comments. You want to say something to me, you know how to reach me. You want to write something for the web, pay for your own hosting, and use hyperlinks. If you can't be bothered to host your own words in your own domain, I can't be bothered to read them.
Of course, the irony of me writing this on HN does not escape me, but in this case, I think we write the actual content.
I can't imagine not having comments on my blog. With no comments it's basically just a diary. You can track pageviews, but you never know if anyone actually read or learned anything from your post. You have no idea if anyone cares.
I have comments on my blog. I'd never consider removing them for all but the most touchy of subjects. Yes, sometimes people say things I don't agree with. Welcome to the real world.
I do moderate my comments (100% pre-moderated, because I hate captcha and yet also hate spam) but I don't get enough comments to actually make that a burden. I also don't moderate out anything that's not pure obvious spam (though to be fair, my posts don't usually cover anything terribly controversial either).
If you find reading other people's comments fulfilling (either on your own site or on sites that you visit), that's awesome.
I tend not to read comments on any site that has them. I consider sites like HN which exist solely for comments an exception. If I had a blog, I certainly wouldn't let other people comment on it. I suppose this means there's a chance I might miss out on some really enlightening comment that someone makes. Based on ~20 years of reading comments on the internet, I'm willing to take that chance.
It might just be my innate negative reaction to someone telling people what to do, but listening to someone make bullshit blanket statements about how you should spend your time pisses me off (although at least he said "please").