Here's 12 reasons why I'm turning off commenting.

And the biggest one rhymes with ham. 

Blog Marketing Academy turned off comments and said "Social media is really far superior than blog comments for any kind of online conversation."

Blog commenting is on a decline, as many bloggers, like myself, who used to see many comments per post, are now down to just a few spammers.

Is commenting becoming outdated? 

And, the comments that do remain on blogs are, in fact, literally dated.

Stamped and sealed in time forever on the date they were written like a time capsule.

When are they no longer relevant?

And why save them?

Often bloggers feel like they have to make comment rounds or participate in share pods that force each other to comment on content that they'd otherwise never comment on.

This only creates unnatural and inorganic comments. 

I see endless websites with the same long comment threads full of variations of this exchange: Commenter: "Thank you for sharing." Blogger: "Thank you for commenting."

Maybe it's only me, but I don't see how these mini-exchanges have any positive effect on the article, contribute to the content, or encourage any kind of further learning.

It's just small talk.

And small talk blows.

I want to be able to read what I want and move on.

I don't want to feel obligated to leave a like or a comment so I don't want anyone else to feel like they have to either. 

Don't get sucked into validation obligation - one should never expect praise on any form of content creation.

So, read, enjoy, laugh, do whatever you want - no obligation.

I get a ton of low quality comments from other website owners who are just trying to leave links to their own pages, or products or services they’re promoting or selling.

So, no.

People can often comment on blog posts with no name, social handle or website - essentially leaving zero public accountability.

How does this contribute at all if someone doesn't even want to say who they are?

Bot123 likes my article? 

As if.

The main reason I'm turning off comments is to eliminate spam.

I'm just not willing to spend 30 minutes a day every darn day of my life culling spam anymore.

It's too much time wasted.

I used to use Disqus, then Jimdo, with captchas, and still the spam gets through.

Every day, over a dozen people jump through all the hoops I set up just to write mundane phrases like “this is helpful”, "great work", or often just rearranging text from the article itself into a comment to try to leave a link.

I have to individually moderate these and I'm tired.

So tired.

Zen Habits turned off comments by explaining “I’ve tried several different software solutions for comment spam, and they don’t really solve the problem of humans leaving comment spam. Even things like Askimet ... and CAPTCHA let a lot of spam through. Trust me, I’ve done a lot of research, and when spammers are motivated, they’ll find a way through for a site with this kind of traffic.”

Of the non-spam comments I receive, the majority of them are specific questions, and leaving a to-do item for me buried deep deep down in a comment thread on a blog post is just not an ideal spot.

Instead:

• Search interests for answers to your questions.
• Search destinations for country-specific stuff.
• Send a message.

I can't help but wonder if comment-free writing gives some writers the freedom to write the way they intend to without the artificial stress of writing just to be comment-worthy, or perhaps tailoring content to be less controversial.

Personally, I enjoy comment-free articles more because I interpret disabling comments as a bold, confident move that proves the author isn't seeking external validation.

I find it a very refreshing pleasure to read an article and when finished, be left marinating in my own thoughts, and not influenced by outside noise.

It's a rare treat.

This, like many other thinky-type pieces, has never really been a huge comment blog.

Seth Godin explained why he doesn't have comments by saying, “I think comments are terrific, and they are the key attraction for some blogs and some bloggers. Not for me, though.”

Believe it or not, comments don’t really matter to page views or keyword rankings.

Hubspot actually did all the data crunching research, analyzed over 100,000 blog posts, and didn't find a correlation between either comments and links or between comments and page views, concluding that the "data shows that blog comments are not correlated with increased traffic.”

Turning off commenting streamlines and simplifies pages so that posts don't go on forever with endless comments at the bottom that you have to scroll through. 

Change is a good thing and experimentation is also a good thing.

My readers know I love change because I'm forever tinkering and tweaking things.

Stagnant = boring!

If I ever really miss commenting, or if you guys every really want it back, I'll definitely be open to that and can always turn it back on again, at any time, on whatever platform.

I always encourage everyone to do whatever feels right to them.

So, for me, now, comments are off so that I can reclaim my time.

So, instead of saying thank you for commenting, I say thank you for reading.