Eugene Volokh reiterates why he doesn't allow comments on his site. I agree that they can be a hassle (imagining the volume of comments he'd have to deal with), but I'd like to point again to a new comment paradigm I described several months ago, to widespread acclaim apathy.
Get your Tim Geithner TAX CHEAT! stamps!
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The comment login system is acting strange. If you get an error message saying you aren't logged in when you are, just reload the comment page and try again. I'm trying to track this bug down, but it's not easy.
I can see where Eugene is coming from and agree for heavy traffic blogs like his and Instapundit this is probably a good policy.
However, by and large I find that I enjoy blogs with comments better than those without. While I can alwasy go to my own blog and comment on someone's entry (which I do on occasion), I find commenting and (non-emitional) debates in a comment section fun (like the bit from Monty Python, "I'm here for an argument.")
The big problem seems to be that most big bloggers don't want to take the time to moderate comments, thus sacrificing one of the great advantages blogs have over, e.g., newspapers. A new paradigm (similar to what I've suggested) would let them outsource that moderation to volunteers, as well as provide an organization structure that would allow a large volume of comments to be useful.
Once micropayments technology is perfected, I think perhaps a good approach to blog comments management would be to charge a penny per posted comment. This will cut down on flame wars and comment-spam. I'd pay a penny to post an intelligent thought or useful link - wouldn't you?
Yeah, but I wonder whether or not the infrastructure required to make $0.01 payments possible would be worthwhile... the penny itself sure isn't.
Redpaper.com is set up on that few cents proposition and seems to do ok. MY comments have certainly added excitement to my life. I think they're worthwhile. Recently, it was the comments to the various spyware threads that had a lot of useful information. BTW