1. I have been getting very few publishable comments lately, yet...
2. In terms of page views (and posts) the blog has been thriving as never before - November 2016 had the highest ever number of views (nearly 80,000) and posts (67) with each new post typically getting between 500-1000 views; more than double a year ago (and some of the most viewed posts have no comments, or just a couple).
3. Therefore, the comments are apparently not contributing significantly to the popularity and value of the blog - for me, or for readers.
4. Nonetheless, because there were comments, I needed to moderate and check these several times a day - which was a bit of a tyranny on my time and effort.
5. Therefore I have stopped comments altogether. I am happy to get feedback by e-mail instead, and could in principle post this as a footnote to a blog post. If there are previous comments of yours that you value but are now invisible, you could write and ask me for a copy and I may be able to oblige.
