Thanks for all of the feedback on yesterday’s post.
There have been about 250 comments to date and a similar number of email replies.
Not surprisingly the feedback from the email replies was overwhelmingly supportive of removing the comments. It seems that most of the people who read via email don’t wade into the comments. And they email me directly with comments which often leads to a one to one private conversation.
The feedback in the comments was overwhelmingly to keep them. And there were lots of strong arguments for that.
I did get one email from a reader who told me the ability to engage in the AVC comments helped him get through a difficult time in college. That got my attention.
I also got a ton of suggestions on how to modify the comments to make them more manageable (limiting the number and length of comments, limiting the time allowed to post one, charging people to comment, etc). I like that line of thinking a lot but I am limited in terms of what I can do by the Disqus feature set.
I will ponder all of this for a bit and let it all sink it. Thanks for taking the time to tell me what you all think.
