Comments are the lifeblood of any website. It keeps pumping some interesting views and discussions into a post. However, I have seen several blogs which close comments for posts which are older than say a month or two.
The major concern which plays a factor in closing down comments is spam, since many users believe that spammers usually target. However, the spam plugins available today are very effective at curbing spam if not entirely stopping them. If you are interested in know about those plugins, you can visit an earlier post from me about Spam and Security plugins for WordPress.
However, getting back to the point. I do close comments on certain blog posts like contests and posts which are totally out-dated, but using a mass closure on comments results in several problems, which include:
- For example, say when I write about products, more often than not I have seen authors of those products commenting on that post to tell everyone about a new version availability. This helps both me and the readers to know about the newer version.
- Some posts are evergreen and will spark a discussion no matter when they were written. If you use an option to automatically close comments, those discussions will no longer happen.
- More often than not I have seen users ask questions on older posts, several times they have been useful for me to update the old posts or write new ones.
I have listed just few of the several reasons why I do not automatically close comments on the older posts. Do you do that? Whatever your answer to the question, it would be interesting if you tell me and others about your thoughts on it.
