Comments is a post on The Hickensian

I turned off comments in the last redesign of powazek.com because I needed a place online that was just for me. With comments on, when I sat down to write, I’d preemptively hear the comments I’d inevitably get. It made writing a chore, and eventually I stopped writing altogether. Turning comments off was like taking a weight off my shoulders. It freed me to write again.

Derek Powazeck Your right to comment ends at my front door

Derek just echoed some of my thoughts, and helps me explain why I’ve turned of my comments recently. I feel able to post more often now, it’s just spare time that I need now.

Spam is also a reason. It used to be that posts over 5 weeks ago would attract comment spam, nowadays it’s a matter of a few hours. While Textpattern does a good job of filtering off a lot of the crap, there are always a few that sneak through. As a discussion system blog comments feel broken.

Instead, I’m in the process of updating the blog design (using the Responsive Design technique) and I will add a simple twitter reply link to each post. If you want to make a comment, just send a reply using that, and we’ll see how it goes!