Blog comments: on or off?

I turned comments off about a year ago.

The spam was relentless, the trolls were louder than the fans, and moderating it was a part-time job I never applied for.

But now the blog reads like a monologue, and I miss the accidental conversations that used to happen in the margins — the corrections, the "this saved me" notes, the arguments that taught me something.

The discussion moved to social, sure, but I don't own that. It's rented land, it disappears in a feed, and I can't search it later.

So now I'm wondering if I overcorrected.

Do you leave comments open and moderate hard, keep them off and point people to a community space, or do something in between like a "reply by email" link?

And honestly — is the silence even a problem, or am I just nostalgic for a web that's already gone?