Turning Comments Off

This is a quick post to announce that I have turned off the comments starting today.

Most people wouldn’t know that I had already planned for comments to be turned off at some point even before I launched the site. There are two reasons for this.

Firstly, I intend for the content in the articles to be the key source of value for readers, rather than through the discussion it generates. Information shared in a thread of comments can get quite random because of one-off comments from different people, which make the extractable value from the discussion very minimal. That being said, there are definitely exceptions to the rule, such as when the objective of the article is to allow readers to cross share information.

Secondly, if I am to evaluate what will be a more effective use of my time, I can add more value to more people by investing my time to write more articles rather than administrating comments. While this might not crop up as a big issue in the beginning with a small stream of comments, it easily adds up in the long run, as well as when comments stream become higher. Using the 80/20 rule, writing definitely falls under the 20% tasks that contribute 80% of the effects.

I decided to keep comments on for the first few months so that I could have a good sense of reader reception to my content and style of writing. In the past 2 months since the site was launched, I had been able to gather a great source of feedback, thanks to all of you commenting This feedback has allowed me to gain a better understanding of how I can better write to reach out to others. At the same time, I also felt that I’m starting to get distracted with moderating and replying comments rather than focusing on more valuable tasks such as writing.

I’ve been thinking about this in the past week and eventually decided today that it’s time to close off comments, especially since the primary objective of feedback has already been served.

In terms of the downsides, I really don’t see much of it. Some bloggers may feel that comments is critical for community generation, and I agree with that. However, I envision this blog to be an information repository rather than a community hub. When the time comes to set up a community, I’ll probably do so via a forum portal rather than through comments. I don’t think feedback will stop rolling in, since the contact form will always be there. Many readers here also seem to prefer sending me their feedback via the contact form too rather than the comments area.

With the closing of comments, I can now be more focused on writing articles and serving my purpose of helping others grow, which is my end objective.

Comments might be turned on for specific posts in the future, but it will remain closed as default from now on. Trackbacks/Pings will still remain open. Thank you to everyone who has been commenting in the posts here or commented before – I really appreciate you for taking the time out to share your input For future articles, please use use the contact form if you have any feedback you would like to share. Thank you!