Comments are heavy

That’s right. You know exactly what I’m talking about, because you feel it, too. Each time you fire up Google Docs, or your favorite text editor, you can hear them — the rest of the Internet — tearing your fragile ideas apart. Don’t be so dramatic you say? I’ll stop projecting now.

More and more, I’m seeing bloggers disable comments and I think that’s a good thing. In my opinion, Alex Payne says it best:

The main reason I don’t allow comments is that I want to inspire debate. I think people do their best writing when they’re forced to defend their ideas on their own turf. It’s one thing to leave a comment on someone else’s blog, but quite another to put your argument in front of your own readers. It forces a level of consideration that, without fail, results in a higher quality exchange of ideas.

Recently I came across a great post by Jon Hicks on comments. He shares a telling quote from Derek Powazeck:

I turned off comments in the last redesign of powazek.com because I needed a place online that was just for me. With comments on, when I sat down to write, I’d preemptively hear the comments I’d inevitably get. It made writing a chore, and eventually I stopped writing altogether. Turning comments off was like taking a weight off my shoulders. It freed me to write again.

Some of the purist out there will disagree with me and say that comments are the best part of the Internet. I don’t agree, but I see your point. That being said, I really love the commenting system put in place on Jon Hicks’ redesigned blog — he encourages people to comment, but doing so via Twitter.