Wriging

Here's one explanation about closing comments from a designer. You can find many more out there.

Good question, I never actually thought about that. I originally thought that they only closed comments for posts that serve a purpose for a limited time, i.e. contest. Perhaps by closing comments you save time by not having to moderate or even save webspace, who knows. Spam is also a good hint.

I can also imagine that it's to prevent the owner from having to find and respond to old topics or posts.

Personally I don't think a site without comments is a blog. That said, some sites initiate a conversation, others engage in conversation. To me a site initiates a conversation, a blog (higher form of a site) engages in conversation. Everyone doesn't want to have a conversation about what they write.

On my blog some entries will have comments, some will not. Should be interesting to see how that works out.

Reducing spam is another reason. And most people don't comment on an entry after 60 days (adjust this number to your audience).

IMHO it can be frustrating when people comment on really old posts that haven't seen activity in 9 months. The conversation died back then, why start it up again? It's especially frustrating for me when I write a post and it evokes some emotional responses from readers; then we all make nice with each other and everything's ok but then out of the blue some joe finds the post from a google search and gets all mad at something someone said 9 months ago. They don't take into consideration that the conversation had been resolved and ended a long time ago.

From my point of view it's just nicer to have the bulk of the conversations on my blog focusing on my more recent posts. Again, that's just my opinion.

I don't think there is anything wrong about commenting on posts that have long since been commented out before. I for one appreciate things like that cause it shows that whatever I wrote may still be relevant now and people pay enough attention to it to comment.

I've got a few posts that still invoke comments even though they are really old. Of course, they are technical post or posts that people find useful to themselves. But whatever works, and I like the whole interaction between readers.

I'm with the not closing comments crowd. Only yesterday I was posted on a site for a recent article and an older article, which in turn lead to having a post commented on that was several months old. People can come to your site at any time and if you say use popular posts or similar posts they will find their way to old posts. If I had closed that post then they wouldn't have been able to start in the conversation where they wanted.

@ frotzed-even if a post is 9 months old, new things can develop within the previous comments...and maybe someone new has come into play and wants to say something.....I think posts should always remain open...just my humble opinion tho....

I actually don't close comments on any of my posts, ever. I'm just saying that sometimes it can be frustrating.

It´s a good idea to close comments when an entry is quite old, or an update has been released.

Conversation dies, the spam floodgates open.