Turning comments off

Turning comments off  means change and it is coming to Defrosting Cold Cases.

As you can see on my blog, I have disabled comments. All comments that were made before today are not deleted. They are just not visible anymore but would pop back up if I enabled commenting again.

There are many reasons for removing comments. Copyblogger explained them here and Matt has his reasons here. Both voice an issue I have struggled with for some time now: fighting spam is time-consuming.

Despite great filters spam pops up anyway because the spammers find new ways to trick the filters. What I find mostly now is a comment like this: “Great information, I am so glad you posted this” followed by blog name dot-com. By leaving out the “@” they trick the filters. I remove hundreds of those every few days and over 400 last evening. I’d rather spend that time reading and blogging.

Comments are now disabled and I know that it signals that I am closing the discussion. That is just one way to see it. The discussions about my posts have always been most active on social media. It has been like that from the start in 2009. When I link my posts to Twitter, Google Plus, and LinkedIn people respond there. I also get a lot of email which I appreciate and always respond to on time.

If you see anything here on my blog that you like or you disagree with please share that link and comment on your own blog or on your social media platforms. The discussion continues but it changes shape and form. And for now, this is what I feel is best for my blog.

Other changes that will be made in the future concern the blog roll and the subscription feed. They too will change format.

Change is good. It is 2014.

The blogosphere is changing and after 4+ years of blogging, so am I.