Suggestions On When To Turn Off Comments

By jeffcBlog Comments

Ronald Huereca of the Readers Appreciation Project brought up a point in which I haven’t thought about before and that is when to turn off comments. In his post, Ronald mentions that it is probably a good idea to turn off comments when:

  • You’re on vacation
  • You’re done with blogging
  • You’d rather concentrate on writing
  • You don’t ever respond
  • You don’t ever have time
  • Legal Issues

I’d like to add on to this list with a few of my own.

  • Spam filter doesn’t work
  • Receiving hateful comments on a regular basis

Personally, the way I have Akismet set up on my WordPress blog, I don’t think I’ll ever have to worry about a ton of spam getting through. However, I would much rather have the commenting system disabled on my blog rather than coming back from vacation to 100 or so comments that are within the moderation queue.

Have you ever disabled comments either on a post or your entire blog? If so, what brought about the change? Also, if you have any more suggestions to add to the list of when comments should be disabled, be sure to add them in the comments.

4 thoughts on “Suggestions On When To Turn Off Comments”

  2. I wrote about why I disable comments feature site wide when I started my new blog.

    Some fellow bloggers persuade me to change my mind, but until now based on what I want to go with the blog, it sounds like this is still the way to go.

    What do you think?

  3. My typepad account is set up so no one can post comments after the post has been live for a month.

    I don’t get huge traffic yet, so I haven’t had any spam problems. But I never thought about what to do when I go on vacation.

    Thanks for talking about this subject. Now when I go away for more than a few days I’ll remember to disable my comments.

  4. Jeff, we are always on the same line of thinking…

    I just disabled comments on my personal blog.

    I had been planning on doing this for awhile, but it required edits to my theme.

    I was actually considering making a post explaining why I did so and the pontial benefits of doing so.

    Other reasons to disable comments:

    • Promote links to your blog (if someone wants to reply to your post, they might be inclined to write about and link to it).
    • You can encourage other ways of contacting you (like Twitter, email, etc.)
    • You want your blog to appear like something else

    I’m sure there are more.

    Of course, if your users are used to replying to your content, disabling them could have repercussions.

    Also, some people might not subscribe to your content because they feel left out.

    Double-edged sword in the end.

    I will say… many more blogs are beginning to disable comments. This is also a side-effect of WordPress being used for more than just a blog.

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