I couldn't agree more with his claim that comments are an unnecessary feature for a modern blog. Back in Web 2.0 times comments were an absolute must-have. I think the web in 2013 has largely moved on from the notion that "everything must have a comment form below it".
People generally don't put as much work into their comments as you did into your blog post, so the comment section is a tangible dive in written quality. And they tend to be quite "fire and forget", because although somebody might disagree with something in the five seconds after reading a post, they are unlikely to remember that disagreement two days later and return to see if anyone responded.
Personally, if somebody felt strongly enough about something I wrote to want to say something to me something about it, I'd prefer an email anyway.
I think the web in 2013 has largely moved on from the notion that "everything must have a comment form below it".
It's definitely true that a lot of people don't put much energy into their comments, but when they do those comments can be very valuable. For example, I wrote a post about why physicians assistant or nursing school is a smarter choice for most people than med school (http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should-beco...), and some of the comments are really good. Do I delete the dumbest? Yes. But the occasional really good comment outweighs the many really bad ones, at least in my experience.
Also, if people today are going to comment on something you write on a blog its more likely they'll comment on your FB link to the post, or they'll link to the post on FB themselves, or mention it on Twitter. Before I killed comments with my redesign I'd have maybe 2 comments on the blog when there was often robust conversation happening on FB. I'm not particularly happy about those conversations being locked up on FB, but there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it.
People generally don't put as much work into their comments as you did into your blog post, so the comment section is a tangible dive in written quality. And they tend to be quite "fire and forget", because although somebody might disagree with something in the five seconds after reading a post, they are unlikely to remember that disagreement two days later and return to see if anyone responded.
Personally, if somebody felt strongly enough about something I wrote to want to say something to me something about it, I'd prefer an email anyway.