Comments, shmomments...

We'll live without the comments, Stacy. The friends you've made will remain, even if they're comments do not. Future posts and comments will greatly overshadow anything in the past soon enough.

My vote:Transfer
I'm a new guy, so I haven't posted anything for the Smithsonian. But you have and even though others surely have, this is your web log.
So, I say transfer your archives because your opinions is basically why I stop by.
(Whichever is easiest for you).

I lost all my comments when I moved to wordpress. What I did, (check out the links to my favorite posts in my sidebar) is copy the comments in my favorite posts and then copied then when I moved to wordpress. You lose your totals, but still have the comments. Personally, I love the comments, but rarely do I go back and read them over again. Do what's easiest!

It hurts to lose the comments, but...either way. I decided not to transfer, that way if I can't think of something to post, I can just pull over an old post if it still applies. Still, I lose my comments...but I get new ones. Thing is...you get all that stuff over here, and the search engine optimization stuff will find it and send you readers looking to research that stuff. On my old site they can't find it cause I have a redirect set up to my new one...so

Its all up to you. Weigh out your options and just make a judgement call.

I think Jay is giving you good advice. Either way your faithful fans will follow.

If you're absolutely certain there is no way to port the old comments over, I would like if you'd keep the old blog active, as an archive. You would, of course, have to go over there and post something every so often, since I'm fairly certain Blogger will delete blogs that are inactive for a span of time (it's in the Terms of Service, but no exact lenght of abandonment is mentioned).

Of course, you can--for your own archival purposes--simply save each of your Blogger Archive pages as an HTML file; of course, that won't get the individual comments--you'd have to open each individual post's page with Blogger comments and save them. That would be a royal pain in the arse. The Haloscan comments are much easier--from your "Manage Comments" page, you can export all your comments (as an XML page; 1000 comments per page).

I realize sharing those personally archived pages with the blogosphere would present a challenge (hosting them on your own webspace somehow, perhaps). And ultimately, we all know our words are mostly perishable, though we take pride in them. So, it's all up to you any way, and I for one will not die if my comments are laid to rest.

If you can work out a way to transfer them over like Paula did, go for that. But if not, I think you should just leave them as they are, maybe with a link. I occasionally go back and read my own (that's why I don't have Haloscan), and they are often the funniest and/or most touching parts of a blog.

keep the old site as an archive. (I'm mulling the same options now...)

Dang, it's too close to call. What's a housewife to to?

Flip a coin; if it lands on its edge, ditch the comments.

There, simple enough, don't you think?

;-)

Hi Stacy...testing the "remember me" thingy...and btw, I love MT...but I was having serious issues with it that my web host didn't seem to know how to fix!

Ok....going to comment on something else to see if I'm remembered, lol.