Last month, I wrote about whether a blog should have a comments section.

I couldn’t reach a conclusion, and watching other bloggers happily launch their comment sections made me jealous. So I decided to stop theorizing and just try it.

One month later, my blog had 110 comments total.

60 from readers. 50 from me replying.

That means I replied to almost every single one. The ones I didn’t reply to were cases where a reader responded to my reply, and I chose not to keep the thread going. Someone has to stop, right? But for someone like me, not replying feels uncomfortable. So the cost of running a comments section was higher than I expected.

I got some genuinely great feedback. Readers pointed out things I’d missed (like how certain Chinese slang I used could be misinterpreted). Some told me they started their own blog because of mine, or that watching my YouTube interview helped them stop beating themselves up over their fleeting interests. Those comments made my entire day. Without a comments section, those might have been stopped by the friction of sending an email.

But after reflecting on the full month, I decided to shut it down.

Four reasons.

1. Other people’s comments become part of my writing

Reading a post and reading its comments is one continuous experience.

I would never casually invite a stranger to co-write an article with me.

But that’s essentially what I did. To lower the barrier for “interaction,” I let anyone comment under my carefully written posts. A random passerby could type a single letter as their nickname, leave a nonsensical remark under my work, and I’d patiently respond. Then another letter-person shows up. Talking past each other.

Seeing different perspectives is interesting. But when the cost of sharing an opinion is near zero and there’s no accountability, the quality of discussion drops fast. And the person responsible for that discussion is still me.

It’s no different from letting strangers scribble on my manuscript.

Worse, these are public comments on my website.

I’m not just dealing with the person who commented. I’m also worrying about how every other reader scrolling past the comments will judge my response, and which “side” they’ll agree with.

How is that different from social media?

2. One negative comment outweighs ten positive ones

Writing a post already takes a lot of energy.

One snarky comment and I can spend an entire afternoon stewing over how to respond.

As an ENTP, I love debating and I’m confident I can win. But I don’t want to debate unimportant people on my own website. Win or lose, I’m the one losing time and energy.

I had so many encouraging comments, many from people I actually care about. Yet the ones I fixated on were the few negative ones, or the negative ones that might show up in the future.

Psychology calls this negativity bias. Our reaction to negative feedback is naturally several times stronger than positive.

Several times is an understatement. My app has over 100,000 ratings, averaging 4.94 stars. But I’ve still received 233 one-star reviews. Even though positive reviews outnumber negatives 400 to 1, seeing a bad review still ruins my mood. So I barely check app reviews anymore.

What I should care about is what the people I care about think. Everyone else’s opinion genuinely doesn’t matter.

3. Managing comments is a time sink

I hate “managing” things and making “choices.”

Opening a comments section meant one more place to check besides email. I initially turned on email notifications, but most people entered fake emails, so notifications just bounced. I turned them off.

But without notifications, I had to manually check the admin panel on a regular basis.

Then there’s the moderation dilemma:

  • With moderation: more friction for readers, plus I have to decide whether to approve each comment.
  • Without moderation: my website essentially has a back door where anyone can walk in and scribble on the walls at any time.

99% of comments were great. But that remaining 1% made me uncomfortable. Yet turning on moderation just for that 1% felt like overkill.

And self-hosting a comment system is a maintenance commitment. It works fine now, but give it a few years and something will inevitably break and need fixing.

I already refuse to manage my wardrobe or my investments. Why create more things to manage?

4. I want to optimize for writing, not interaction

This is the most important reason.

As someone who wants to be a writer, what I should be doing on this site is writing more and sharing more opinions.

And if I want to share opinions that are genuinely different, they’re going to be controversial.

A comments section would only make conflict-averse me play it safe.

The primary task of blogging is to write.

I thought enabling comments would motivate me to write more. In reality, every time I had to deal with comments and carefully word my responses, it ate into the time and energy I could’ve spent writing.

Creating solo is lonely. I’d love to interact with all the cool readers out there. But after this experiment, I don’t think a comments section is the best way to do it.

Email has more friction. But a little friction isn’t bad. It’s a built-in filter.

So I deleted the comment system I spent a month researching and setting up.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to leave a comment this past month. You were part of the experiment.

If you have any feedback or thoughts, you can always email me. And I’ll keep reaching out on my end too.