> Those willing to write me a personal e-mail in order to share their thoughts on my stupid little blog probably have something interesting to say. Neat. I exp

> Those willing to write me a personal e-mail in order to share their thoughts on my stupid little blog probably have something interesting to say. Neat. I expect it would also reduce low-quality content, because (optimistically) commenters are making a more human connection by directly emailing the author and asking him to do a little work, and (pessimistically) they know they can't get past the content filter, and nobody will ever read their screed if it's too nasty. I've run a blog for over 17 years, and haven't turned comments on for over 16 of them. I don't consider the pluses worth the minuses. But, this method never occurred to me.