I've been back and forth with comments over the years, including a couple posts that went viral enough to get a large volume of comments in a short time window. At the moment I've got some of those eras archived in a ZIP file but not currently visible. Moderation is definitely a responsibility. Spam Moderation is definitely a chore. Data ownership is definitely a trade-off: some of the comment hosting platforms that are better at spam auto-moderation want to own more things about your data or show more ads or trackers to your readers.
It can be a lot to deal with. I added a comment widget again just recently because I missed some of the feelings of conversation, but I probably picked one that won't likely get as much conversation as some of my past tools did because higher barrier to entry on first comment (but that also makes the spam floor higher and gives me a trade-off in data ownership versus tracking JS). We'll see how long I leave it in place this time.
Comments
I've been back and forth with comments over the years, including a couple posts that went viral enough to get a large volume of comments in a short time window. At the moment I've got some of those eras archived in a ZIP file but not currently visible. Moderation is definitely a responsibility. Spam Moderation is definitely a chore. Data ownership is definitely a trade-off: some of the comment hosting platforms that are better at spam auto-moderation want to own more things about your data or show more ads or trackers to your readers.
It can be a lot to deal with. I added a comment widget again just recently because I missed some of the feelings of conversation, but I probably picked one that won't likely get as much conversation as some of my past tools did because higher barrier to entry on first comment (but that also makes the spam floor higher and gives me a trade-off in data ownership versus tracking JS). We'll see how long I leave it in place this time.