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This! Exactly this! The moment you start worrying about which posts/pages people looked at is the very moment you start getting sucked into the vortex that's called "pandering to the crowd". The extreme end of that is "clickbait content".

Down that road I wish not to go!

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Yes, there are much better ways of getting user feedback, for example a comments section.

Or simply an email or a contact form.

The reality is that one usually does not have large discussion, only one to one exchanges (if any). Email is fine for that, you can always update the post if there aee interesting outcomes.

Disqus? Just joking. Any good alternatives?

I've seen a bunch of people just link to HN and reddit discussions of their posts. On my blog I am using utteranc.es, which let's people make comments using github issues. It does require making a github account though. Here's an example of some comments on a post: https://blog.kdheepak.com/writing-papers-with-markdown.html

/r/exlurker? (Only half joking!)

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