Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

So, someone built Blog Surf[0] and I spent my morning weaving through various blogs (since it has a directory), and first thing that caught my eye was that for every 5 blogs I checked, only 1 had comments open on article pages.

If I look at posts like this one[1] and this one also[2] - these are extremely detailed articles (very interesting too), but no comments? I am not pointing my finger towards the authors, either.

It's just weird that commenting is being pushed either to Twitter or email.

What do you think about this?

I fully understand that blog comments can be a pain in the butt to moderate when the average Joe just starts leaving "Thanks!" with a link to their website. But, it's perfectly normal to remove the ability for anyone to link back to their website.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30844149

[1]: https://wattenberger.com/blog/css-cascade

[2]: https://www.joshwcomeau.com/css/understanding-layout-algorit...

Social platforms did a tremendously effective job of training and conditioning the users to not escape their walled gardens and not even click links, let alone read or comment on blog posts. And platforms like Twitter bury tweets with links anyway, so few users get to see them in the first place.

I have been blogging for about 14 years - 7 of these on a blog dedicated for software engineering topics.

I removed all commenting options after about 8 years of blogging. The reason was spam, noise and little value add.

Around 2015 70% of comments coming in to my blog were from bots and another 10% from anonymous folks making irrelevant, and sometimes insulting comments which I all had to delete. About 20% of the comments were still valuable, but moderating felt like an additional stress, on top of writing.

After a few of my blog posts made it on to Hacker News, I noticed the discussions here are far more interesting and productive, surpassing the best comment threads on my blog over the 8 years while I still had comments open.

I removed all commenting and never looked back. When I write, I focus on writing. If anyone wants to, they can find my contact details to share insights about the post - and some people still do.

As someone writing a blog, I'm much better off with no comments open to the whole world. I suspect this is what most other people have also realized.

I read blogs, usually blog posts about a specific remedy for a tech issue. The only reason for me to read/skim comments is if the suggested remedy or solution is no longer working and if somebody in the comments might have added their findings that do work. Else I have no reason to read any of the comments.

I think you're talking about Webmentions.[0]

[0]: https://indieweb.org/Webmention