Blaugust 2025 is in full swing, and the topic du jour is comments. A few posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) have gone up, and some have comment sections with relevant conversations. It’s been interesting to follow.
I, as you can see at least as of this writing, don’t have comments. No site published on this domain since I registered it in 2009 has, though I’ve occasionally thought about implementing them since launching this iteration in 2014. Many of the reasons mentioned by others in this conversation apply: comments add technical complexity, they add moderation burden, and so on. But I haven’t yet seen anyone mention one I find important: identity. And I want to counter one I have seen mentioned: community.
Many Blaugustians use a domain that is neutral, and/or a pseudonym. They also tend to have a niche, or focus for their writing. Blaugust originated in the indie gaming community, so there’s a strong representation of that, for example.
I, on the other hand, post on a domain based on my name, (implicitly) signing posts with it. My site has no real explicit focus, and what ends up on it is basically what’s swirling around in my head at the time.
As such, words my readers have the privilege of reading on my site are thoroughly mine, or at least explicitly quoted. I value this alignment in identity, silly as it may seem.
Blaugust is a community. The Discord server has been poppin’, the conversations are great, and the people are lovely. The conversation part, that’s how the community is built.
A blog with comments enabled can also be a community. Put together a post and some comments, and you have a conversation. By virtue of how all this usually works, that conversation generally lives on the page of that post. Participating in this conversation requires visiting that page, possibly repeatedly. I most definitely don’t have time for that—I don’t really even find myself having the time to keep up with my feed reader as well as I’d like.
I’ve been reading blogs of some sort for over two decades at this point and have had my own for about the same amount of time, with earlier iterations having comment support. Never in all these years did I feel like I gained anything meaningful from supporting them myself or leaving them on other people’s blogs. I have occasionally benefitted from comments others posted on other blogs, clarifying something in the post or adding value in some other way. That, however, has very much been the exception and not the rule.
I don’t want my blog to be a community. I want to be part of one—well, multiple—myself, with my blog. Conversations can happen elsewhere, in spaces more shared than my personal site. Discord, Mastodon, and posts on other people’s blogs are all great options. For me personally, email also works.
In the end, I think a blog is a website with something resembling posts. Literally everything else is bonus, including the usual reverse chronological ordering of said posts. Even support for Atom/RSS feeds, which I personally require to actually follow a blog, is optional. So are comments, tags/categories, pages, pingbacks/webmentions, ActivityPub support, and everything else. I choose to utilize some of those, but not all.
What a blog should be strikes me as a rather prescriptive thing to consider. It should be what the author wants it to be—nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else. If you’re publishing posts on a blog, you’re doing it right.
For funsies, I posted a multiple-choice poll on Mastodon asking what’s required for a site to be a blog, and after 37 responses the top choice was “Feed (Atom, RSS)” with 54% (20 votes), followed by “Nothing” with 43% (16 votes), and “Comments” and “Something else (elaborate in reply)” tied at 3% (1 vote).
Thanks for reading! You can keep up with my writing via the feed or newsletter, or you can get in touch via email or Mastodon.