The Death Of Blog Comments?

I left a couple of comments at Antony Loewenstein's blog today. I think it is one of the best blogs in Ozblogistan, but curiously it hardly ever gets comments (unless the Jewish Zionist blowhards are on the attack). Why is that?

Personally, I have never had much luck attracting comments on my blogs either. And my experiences as a frequent commenter at places like Road To Surfdom have generally left me unimpressed. If you do manage to build a bit of momentum and interest on a thread, it's all over as soon as the next news cycle comes around. Sure, you might pick up a bit of information, but the quality of comments tends to be so poor at most blogs that it's hardly worth reading them.

And to make things worse, most major blog-authors seem to prefer to remain mostly disengaged - have you noticed that? Are they too busy digging up new content, or are they deliberately trying to maintain an air of aloofness? Some, I know, will use a pseudonym whenever they wade into the cesspool of the comments threads. Why is that?

I know that if I leave my comments open and every post shows "COMMENTS ZERO" at the bottom, many people will assume my blog sucks. But I leave the comments enabled because I do receive the occasional comment which sometimes is very useful indeed. And personally I do not take any of my readers for granted. To think that even one person is reading my thoughts is a great reward in itself. Moreover, I am always open to dialogue with anyone who disagrees with me - if only they were a bit more intelligent! Heh.

Some older blogs seem to have built up a community of commenters, but if you look carefully you notice that the people commenting there are the same ones who were around four years ago, and they are still talking the same crap.

So what do you think? Are blog comments a dying art form? It sure looks like that to me.

Should I shut down comments on this blog? If I get no replies to this post, I will take that as a YES. Remember, email is always available for feedback, so it makes little difference to me. I can always re-enable comments when I reach 1000 hits per day.

Let me know what you think.