A better alternative is to have no comments at all (not joking). If the 'activation energy' of replying is higher, more thought will go into the reply.
I've started emailing people if I like what they've written.
Leads to much better discussions and relationships
Interestingly enough, it seems like a lot of blogs these days have entirely disabled comments. I'm not clear on all the reasons why, but definitely noticeable.
Likewise I have noticed higher end consumer products out of luxury boutiques do not show reviews.
Sometimes this is just to avoid spam. I setup a simple API for testing for comment-spam in real-time here:
Comments are often more interesting than the post itself. Pretty much all of Reddit is based on that notion.
And so is HN, I dare say.
Maybe. There's something like a conservation of interest. The best posts often have very tedious comments. The best comments are often corrections to incorrect articles.
Perhaps that's why we seem to be separating comments out into dedicated sites like Reddit and HN, rather than continuing to host comments directly on blogs?