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Why you can't comment here.

It's been a year I removed comments from my blog, and I've done a lot of thinking on it since. Here is why it worked for me.

Yes, my blog doesn't have comments. This wasn't a trivial decision for someone who's been blogging for more than 10 years, and considered comments an integral part of every blog. It turns out it was a good decision. Here are some of the reasons.

There are better ways to give short feedback.

When I had comments on, most people would leave a comment that actually said "I agree", or "I disagree" or "Have a look at this too".

That's nice and I like it, and there's a better way to do it: tweet your short comment with a link to my post. I'll read it, it will show up under the post and your twitter followers (who probably know your context much better than the rest of my blog readers) will read it too.

There are better ways to give long feedback.

If you want to spend the time and give me feedback that doesn't fit in 140 characters, you can easily do it by sending me an email -the address is at the top of each page. Sometimes, I will even update posts to include comments I got via email and feel they add value to it.

Or, even better, write your lengthy "comment" on your blog and link back to mine. If your blog supports pingbacks or webmentions, a link to your post will show up under my post. (Bonus: You get to keep your content under your control, not mine.) If you don't feel that your feedback is good enough to be in your blog, why should it be here?

Random irrelevant, out of context, feedback.

You are the most adorable person that didn't get what I wrote, or didn't read the whole post, or didn't have the time to read the rest of my posts and see where I'm coming from: I don't blame you, been there, done that. Or maybe you are a troll. Or hate me for something I wrote years ago.

Use one of the above mentioned methods to give feedback and you'll make me even more happy I don't have comments here.

My blog is not the best place to hold a discussion.

My blog is a personal blog. I post irregularly, my posts are sometimes in English and other times in Greek and the subjects range from crappy photos I shoot on my phone, to thoughts about my life, to social media analysis and geeky HOWTOs. In other words: even if I wanted, there is no way to build a community around it.

So, who are you interested discussing my post with? A couple of random people that got here by following a link?

If you just want to discuss something with me, use email or twitter (not really the best place for discussions, but you can use it to point me somewhere else), or google+, or facebook.

If there is a discussion about one of my posts on HackerNews of Reddit, or some other site, and I find it interesting, I'll link to it.

I don't care about pageviews.

Many sites use comments to increase pageviews. I get nothing by getting more pageviews: I don't have ads, I don't make money out of my blog. I may even pay a couple cents more to Amazon S3 (where it's hosted) for the extra bandwidth.

It's not 2000 any more.

Had you asked me 10 years ago what a blog is, "comments under each post" would definitely be in the list of distinguishing features.

Back in the day, when hosting a blog was something that not everyone could do, it felt like a responsibility to give others a way to express themselves through your blog comments.

But it's not 2000 any more: Thanks to blogging platforms, social networks, on-line communities, and the rest, it's never been easier for anyone to write something in public.

For some blogs, comments are important, mine do just fine without them.

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