So how much does a commenting feature, or lack thereof, actually relate to a more successful (high-ranking, high readership) WordPress site's success? What percentage of readers actually leave a comment on average?

This is an interesting post on a feature--the commenting feature--of blogs & WordPress which I see as eventually completely going away:

(1) Google continues to hone the targeted impact of their last two algos, and they are increasingly trumpeting their stated emphasis on rel=author and content-focused ranking;
(2) really successful, high-readership bloggers do not generally have a commenting feature activated anyway (e.g., Steven Sinofsky's WordPress-hosted 'LearnbyShipping' blog comes to mind), because they either do not have time, or do not 'need' one... etc, etc.
(3) In fact, any really successful, professionally-max'ed (no time) blogger typically is interactive for only the first day or first-few blog comments anyway...who has the time?

For any kind of targeted growth, the mere logistics and time-consumption required to fully and consistently engage the small segment of active commenters does not lend itself to a smart or sustainable business model...

@Ted's NY Times/Socrates illustration is an interesting, philosophical allusion--but, the key take away for me is that meaningful commenting is an active engagement by beginners, and people with a lot of time (or procrastinators like myself currently at this moment!) on lower-mid to small readership blogs and websites

From my more or less WP-n00b perspective, commenting in general (anywhere) appears to be 80-85% mindless-blowing-kisses-to-one-another by the same 6-12 peeps (friends/mom/neighbors/etc) who appear to be professional acquaintances and/or a few well-intentioned followers of the authors.

I don't mean any disrespect, but commenting seems to be a somewhat mindless affair on most of the blogs I see...with little or no addition to blog-content (which may or may not be of much substance to begin with) by the commenters.

The traditional-TV-and radio-media-related and the dead-tree business-modeled-blogs (good analogy by @Ted above, again) are the WORST--with ridiculously sophomoric, petty, personally-offensive, and combative comment-crud overcoming a clogged cesspool...

There are exceptions, and this particular post and its meaningful comment-threads are a good example of some intelligent discourse, but that's increasingly rare it seems.

Personally, as our remodeled site gets ramped up and rolling, we're considering having no comment feature at all. It seems like that would clarify the basis and motivation of our writing--because we like to write and share--at least it seems more pure, right. Ha!

So, I guess I'd ask the more experienced and the SEO-prone professionals these questions:

(1) If hits and readership drive the rankings--what percentage of Google juice for a highly-ranked (i.e., Alexa-rank) site is attributable to the degree of comments and commenting?

(2) Is there some kind of metric that WordPress.com can use to compare the relationship of ranking sites with their degree of (or lack of) active commenting? That would be cool to see.

I'm guessing that Mr Mullenweg and his band of merry, wonderful, worldwide WordPress-weenies (affectionately stated with a smile--really) everywhere may be on to something: it just may be that the comment aspect of the WordPress website/blog arena less and less of a relevant feature to the whole picture overall. Otherwise, why would it be neglected?

Interesting indeed... Thanks for the insightful and thought-provoking post. Cheers