Rian van der Merwe on taking comments off his site:

Oh, comments. I’ve gone back and forth on this so many times. Sometimes I leave comments open, other times I close them. Sometimes I close comments on a post, get called out on Twitter about it, and then open it up again. It’s confusing and it’s causing me headaches. So I’ve made a decision to close comments on all posts, at least for a month or so, or until someone writes a convincing argument on why sites should have comments.

I’ve gone back and forth on this many times, but I must admit sometimes it doesn’t seem worth it to keep the comments on. Ten years ago comments were a way for the readers to express their opinion on a story — for many that was the only avenue they had to interact with the author.

That’s not the case anymore. You have Twitter, easily accessible email addresses and of course many people have their own blogs to write out their thoughts.