Alan linked to a post on WPTavern discussing comments, how many sites are disabling them, and that the tools needed to view and manage them need to be better.
As I commented, I have both scrapped comments completely and offloaded them to an external location (Medium) due to the aggravations associated with moderation so understand where some are coming from. Things improved considerably over time, spam detection became more effective, and I re-opened them on the WordPress blog for a few years before switching platforms.
Comments are part of the blogging ethos. It's not necessarily about owning the conversation but having it in context. With that in mind, comments were always going to be a feature of (b)log-In – the functionality may not be the most advanced but it works well enough. Having native comments alongside webmentions creates choice and opportunity, and I like that.
However, inspired by the conversation, and with no anti-spam capabilities, I decided to design a simple comment moderation process. Moderation is enabled by a yes/no option on the admin page and, if enabled, comments are flagged and only visible to the admin.
An additional inline control allows comments to be approved with a single click, in keeping with the whole inline ethos of the system:
Simple but effective.
