Why No Comments?
I expect many people will have noticed that I don’t enable comments on anything I post here. There are reasons, and it’s the same one I had when I was running my Wordpress blog.
The first is philosophical: If you want to say something about what I’ve written, then put it in your own blog. I have this blog to hold what I write, and I’m not interested in hosting other’s work as well. If you have a comment, presumably it’s worthy of publication in its own space, and shouldn’t be piggybacking on mine.
The second is personal: I don’t write this stuff to gain approval, nor to seek comment. I write what I write. I try to back my assertions with fact (although I can be lazy when it comes to providing links to my sources. Sorry about that). If I don’t have something to back an assertion, I try to make it clear that I’m either guessing or stating an opinion. People who know me have ways to contact me to correct something. I’m not all that interesting in what random people think of what I say, or whether they agree or disagree with me.
The next reason is psychological: it can be tough enough to have the courage to commit an opinion or idea in a public forum. Opening myself up to the potential for criticism and abuse now has an impact on my mental health. I’m pretty sure that if what I write is objectionable enough, or people don’t agree with it, then they’ll stop reading it (and I’ll see that in my statistics). I’m hoping what I write gets others thinking, or perhaps increases their knowledge on something. But I’m not so arrogant to believe that my opinion, and only my opinion, is the only correct one. I will get things wrong.
The last is semi-legal: if I open up comments, then I now have an obligation to review those comments, filter out ones that transgress certain laws, and if someone libels another person via the comments on my posts, I could be included as a liable party. Substack may get Section 230 protection in the US, but as the “editor” of the comments, I may not necessarily enjoy that same protection. Is it a real risk? Probably not. But I’m not prepared to take that chance.
So there it is. I’m not writing these things to create “engagement” to to start conversations. I write them to get them down for posterity, for better or worse, in the hopes that maybe they may prove useful. They may not, however, and I understand that. These pieces are published for free, and they may be worth exactly what you’ve paid for them.