[cbr]

    there's no reason that a) needs to happen in a public
    comment and b) that you cannot provide an email for
    people to reach you at

I blog a decent amount, and I don't like getting emails about my posts. I'd much rather have the discussion publicly. When we talk in the open other people can contribute to and learn from the discussion. Putting lots of effort in a careful back and forth conversation with a reader is much less worth it if it's a private 1:1.

(If I wanted to talk about things where people couldn't be honest in public it would be different)

[damnstraight]

I mean this is fine, so long as you realize a lot of people prefer any other method of communication and you're likely missing out on feedback.

[cbr]

The feedback I was getting when I explicitly invited people to send me email wasn't generally that good, plus was a lot more hassle to respond to for less benefit. People can still find my email on my contact page, but pushing people to comment publicly has definitely been better.

[bigbugbag]

I agree with you but third party commenting system are terrible and hosting your own means legal liability.

[cbr]

I deal with this in a weird way: people comment on fb/g+/hn/reddit and then I pull the comments onto my blog via a server-side script. For example, comments on my most recent post: http://www.jefftk.com/p/paypal-giving-fund

The (terrible) server-side code is https://github.com/jeffkaufman/webscripts/blob/master/commen...