1. Comments make a horrible interface. One has to scroll through the site looking at every comments link to see if there are any new comments. Of course, most of us don't remember how many comments there used to be, so the number of comments displayed doesn't help us. We acutally have to click the link, wait for it to open, and scroll through to the end to see if there are any unread comments. This is annoying and time-consuming. This is especially troublesome for those who use RSS readers if one's comments aren't syndicated (which ours likely wouldn't be, and I'll note, yours aren't either).
2. We want to control the quality of what's posted here. Internet communities are regularly taken over by unintelligent rabble who degrade the quality of the community and eventually destroy it. There's a reason Chris and I haven't been on the SU webboard since April. And I believe Steve doesn't visit much either. There's just too much content on the SU webboard and the vast majority of it isn't insightful or interesting. By having comments only through e-mail (where we can filter garbage) and trackbacks (where we can be reasonably sure someone credible is responding, and if not, we can delete the trackback link), we can be sure that quality stays relatively high on this blog and people continue to have reason to visit.

As well, we generally agree with the following points posted by Will Baude of Crescat Sententia on July 10 of last year:

1: They clutter up the blog with a lot of different voices. This can be particularly the case on a fairly extensive group-blog like this one.

2: They discourage blog-related links and emails, since people who have comments or counter-arguments can simply stick them in a comment rather than blogging back or writing an email. For those who prefer emails and links, this is a bad thing.

3: They can be abused. Because comments are sometimes uneditable and often unverifiable, people can post as each other and post all sorts of inane and stupid things. Of course, this is the internet and people can do that anyway, but I find it less vexing when it's not happening under my (shared) banner.

4: For those (like myself) who feel compelled to counter reasonable counter-arguments, comments can create a whole lot of work. For some reason not entirely clear to me, people are much more willing to publish repetitive or incomprehensible remarks in "comments" than in emails or blogs. This forces conscientious bloggers to try to decipher them.

5: They can look lonely. A post with no comments at all looks so . . . silly.

6: On a self-referential group-blog like this one comments can get particularly dizzying for the bloggers; if somebody has commented a response to a blog post, when does a counter-response merit a counter-comment and when does it merit a post of its own?

7: They make the blog much harder to fully read, especially on a slow computer. No longer can you simply scroll down post after post looking for something interesting, or reading everything. Instead you have to click at the base of each post to see if anybody has tucked a hidden gem. If bloggers are commenting on one another's posts (see 6) this can get worse.

A "Comments" function turns a blog into a message board. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it's particularly warranted, I think in certain circumstances, such as on vast impersonal publications (like the New York Times or Slate), on popular single-person blogs (like Yglesias), and on blogs that occupy a particular . . . niche (like the Hoosier Review or Crooked Timber) they make quite a bit of sense. And it's also true that because they make it easier to comment on a post, they may increase the total amount of dialogue, even if they shift it from links and emails into javascript. Finally, there is the all important empirical argument that comments increase traffic.

I have no idea if this is the case. Certainly it seems that one of the draw of Matthew Yglesias's blog is the pitched debate that often rages in his comments section. On the other hand, Matthew Yglesias's blog is much different from ours in a number of ways, and I confess I often can't make it through the comments on his posts, even at times like now when the posts are few and far between. Maybe I miss a lot of great stuff. I really don't know. But the standards people employ for posting on message-boards seem fairly low.

My personal feeling is that comments don't add anything to the blog that can't be achieved with technorati. But if you have feelings either way, please let me know, and let me know any reasons you might have.

If you don't want to trackback, send us e-mails. We'll be happy to quote sections of them in replies.