Should I allow comments on this blog?

Fellow blogger Charly sent me the following e-mail:

“You seriously need to enable comments. Comments are the best part of having a blog in the first place. Duh.

:)”

I actually have thought about enabling comments in the past couple of weeks. I’ve thought about it quite a bit. Really, I have no problems with about 98% of my readers leaving comments, and I think the back-and-forth exchange they’d offer could be a lot of fun. I also think it would be good to give other people the ability to contribute when I do “what’s going on around downtown” or “good places to eat” or those kinds of posts.

Let me think about it for a few days. It’s the other 2% that concern me.

Fellow bloggers: How do you handle comments? Do you use “moderated” comments, where you have to approve them before they appear? Do you require users to register (so you can see who they are) before they’re allowed to leave comments? Have you had major problems with people leaving undesirable comments that you’ve had to go in and remove? Have you ever had to ban people’s IP addresses, so they can’t leave comments at all?

Readers: Have you ever read this blog and wished for the ability to leave comments?

You’ll have to e-mail me your responses since I don’t have comments turned on yet.