Should blogs have comments?
It is a question that comes up fairly regularly in blogging circles and one that different bloggers take different approaches to.
- Most bloggers have them – they’re on by default when they set their blog up and they never switch them off. They see the comments as adding a lot to the blog – making it a place of shared learning, interactivity and dynamic conversation.
- Other bloggers decide not to have them. Their reasons vary from not having time to moderate them to being frustrated by comment spam.
Between these views other bloggers take a variety of other approaches ranging from:
- having comments on some posts but not others
- switching comments off over a certain amount of time (to protect from comment spam)
- to not having comments in the early days of a blog and switching them on later once there is a big enough audience to justify them (this is what I did on DPS).
- to requiring membership for comments (thereby effectively switching them off to the general public and reserving the privilege to comment for those willing to sign up).
There are many options – but I thought it’d be interesting to open it up for some discussion.
- Do you have comments on your blog? Why or Why Not?
- Do you think a blog is a blog without comments?
- What are the advantages of having or not having them?
Interested to see where this discussion leads us.
Further Reading on Comments on Blogs:
