Farewell to comments on BeldarBlog

I've very much enjoyed reading and often responding to the comments folks have left on BeldarBlog.

However, I'm weary of clipping comments that are off-topic — usually someone trying to use my bandwidth to sell \/14Gr4 or some such.

Accordingly, I've closed off the comments option on all past threads, and that will now be the default for new threads.  If there are particular topics that I especially want to invite comments on, I may leave those individual threads with open comments, at least for a few days, after I post them.  And anyone who'd like to engage in some dialog on anything I post is welcome to email me with your comments, which I may then append to the relevant thread. 

Also, I still have Trackbacks enabled, so if you have your own blog and want to comment on something I've posted, BeldarBlog can readily cross-reference to your post that way.

UPDATE (Mon Dec 10):   I'm only mildly surprised that Will Baude of Crescat Sententia has such a good memory.  Will's right, of course, in noting that I'm changing my position regarding comments, but he and I are still not on exactly the same wavelength about them.  Although I've changed my default setting to not permit comments, I may well leave particular threads open for comments, or indeed, explicitly invite them on a case-by-case basis.  And I continue to be a fan of the "trackback" procedure, which is a useful way of encouraging dialog among responsible bloggers (although it leaves readers who haven't made the jump into writing their own blogs in the lurch — if there's actually anyone still left in that category).  If Will had trackbacks enabled, for instance, I'd have pinged his post about my dispensing with comments — as I am in fact now doing with respect to Prof. Bainbridge's post on his blog in which he also noted my switch to no-comments-by-default.