I had a great conversation Thursday afternoon with Stowe Boyd, whose writing at Corante's Get Real I highly recommend. I mentioned that my company had recently helped a nonprofit launch a blog, and because they were concerned about the workload (and wingnuts, and spam), they decided not to open it up for comments. I told Stowe, "I think blogs should have comments, but I wasn't prepared to tell them that's always the right thing to do." His response almost popped my earpiece out: "Of course it's the right thing to do!" he bellowed.
A blog without the community dialogue that comments facilitate isn't a blog, he said--it's a journal, a column, a series of press releases. Call it whatever you want, but it's not a blog. Without getting hung up on just what makes a "blog" (Been there, done that), I think he's right.
I can understand why a one-person blog with hundreds of thousands of readers wouldn't have comments. The efforts required to engage with and respond to the comments is far out of proportion to the blogger's capacity, and at that scale, it's not a conversational medium, it's a broadcast, no matter what the platform.
But that covers a tiny handful of sites--a few dozen at most. The vast majority of blogs have small audiences who care passionately about the topics discussed there. (Check out the Ecotraffic figures at the Truth Laid Bear--not a perfect source of data by any means, but a reasonably good one--only the top 250 blogs get more than 1,890 unique visitors a day.)
Organizations that are launching blogs--especially nonprofits and other advocacy groups--are missing a huge opportunity to connect with and learn from their audiences if they don't allow comments. Yes, you'll have to ban a few wingnuts and delete some spam. But that's life online, and if a few flames frighten you into shutting down one of your most valuable communication channels, perhaps you're in the wrong line of work.
When you're running a blog without comments, you're essentially telling your audience, "Thanks for stopping by--now be quiet and let me tell you what you should think." A handful of charismatic bloggers can get away with that on their sites, but organizations and social movements, almost by definition, cannot.
And if you muzzle the most opinionated, active members of your audience, they're going to leave and find someplace else to express themselves. You lose their engagement, ideas and energy; they lose a chance to participate in a community; and your cause loses steam.