Althouse without comments.

Take the poll.

ADDED: The poll is radically unscientific. Those who have stopped reading because the comments are gone should not be here to take the poll. Everyone choosing the last option — "Without the comments, this blog means nothing to me" — is confessing to lying. Those 265 voters (out of 2,071 total) might be expressing anger or lobbying for the return of the comments. Telling me what I write doesn't matter except as a jumping off platform for commenters doesn't work as an argument, directed at me, to bring back comments.

I needed help dealing with the overwhelming proliferation of commenters who intended to ruin the blog — that is, commenters who thought of my work as nothing, or, really, worse than nothing, and hoped to achieve their goal of getting me to nothing.

The 345 people who voted to say that they "feel aggrieved" and see what I did as "wrong" also fail to speak appealingly to me. They are perhaps wrapped up in their own experience and unwilling to see what I went through. They might like the endless party restarted, but their lack of interest in what it's been like for me shows why the party had to end, abruptly on one terrible night, and why I've got to go forward solo.

Those who voted in the bottom 2 categories — more than the ones who voted in the top categories, the supportive answers — reinforce me in my decision to go it alone here.