after disabling comments, 2 things have happened.
1. I’ve received emails from people I’d never heard from before, asking questions about posts, etc…
2. I’ve received messages from people I know and trust, lamenting their inability to post comments
I get that people do read this blog, although in fewer numbers since the Big Comment Disabling of Aught Ten (for whatever reason). But, disabling comments *still* feels like the right thing for me. I’m having fun with the blog again. It’s been a long time since it felt *fun*. I don’t really give a shit if anyone reads it (or still reads it). It’s for me. Comments distract from that.
But I also get that barriers to conversation suck. I just added a cool plugin that drops a shiny contact form on every page, so feedback is just a click away. It contains a link to my twitter account, in case that is useful for whatever reason. So, feedback is still possible, and relatively easily.
What about the public declaration side? I don’t know. Yeah, uncommenting kinda broke that, but trackbacks have always been enabled, so it’s trivial to write a blog post and trackback to anything I post here (and vice versa). Not the same as a full-on comment thread, but it takes care of the public declaration side. And I wonder if comments and feedback really need to be *public* – still thinking that through. If the goal is to respond, that’s still possible. If the goal is to publish stuff into my site, I’m not sure that’s essential to a conversation.
I don’t know what’s going to happen with uncommenting. At the moment, I’m pretty sure the comments will stay disabled (but trackback, contact form, twitter, email, IM, carrier pigeon all still work just fine). That may change down the road, if I feel like it.