Matt Gemmell on the decision to turn off comments on his blog:

It’s been a very difficult decision (I love reading comments on my articles, and they’re almost unfailingly insightful and valuable), but I’ve finally switched comments off. Since I used the excellent Disqus service, the easiest way was simply to disable it globally, which also removes (but doesn’t delete – I still have them) comments on all previous posts too.

I must admit, I’ve considered this approach too, but decided to leave them on.