I’ve decided to close down comments on this blog. Existing comments will remain, and I may open up comments for specific posts in the future, but from now on the default setting will be not to have them.

Comments came when I switched this blog to Movable Type from Blogger in November 2003. Since then there haven’t been many legitimate comments — 64 in total, many from me. My readers, such few as there are, do not appear to be the commenting sort. But more time has been spent weeding out comments from comment spammers (MT-Blacklist helps but there is some effort in maintaining the list), clueless types who think that an individual post on a personal blog is in fact a bulletin board for all comers on the subject, and, most recently, a family member who was using the comments to smack me around a bit online.

The experiment, in other words, was not a success: I was beginning to spend more time dealing with, worrying about or reacting to comments than I was writing the damned entries themselves.

What clinched it for me was when I was searching through my own archives from the Blogger era: no comments, and, if you go back far enough, no entry titles. Yet (it seemed to me) the posts were more interesting, and it looked as though I was having more fun back then.

The thought occurred that the comments were spoiling my fun, and quite possibly making me think twice about posting.

It’s a personal blog, so the point is to write for my own satisfaction, not to worry about, or try to please, an audience who may praise or castigate me immediately below. I shouldn’t lose sight of the point of this exercise. In the process, I’ll probably have a more interesting, more readable blog.

(In the meantime, because I want to maintain the possibility of re-opening comments at least occasionally, I have to close down the comments on each post one at a time. Much drattage.)