It thrilled me to see this topic come up and the way it is presented (both the article and the comments so far). I have used systems like Replyable to help manage comments on the go and receive comments via email.

The absence of comments affects my impression of sites. It can range from a "oh so you just profess that and don't allow anyone to give their opinion" to a NYTimes "damn I can't read that many comments", "oh thank god they have selected the best ones".

I do also feel that comments as a function has been abandoned by WP for years with Akismet as the only tool provided to mitigate spam. I'm currently testing a system similar in concept to CloudFlare, and that is supposed to specifically prevent scraping and spam. Plugins have claimed this before and I had people saying it blocked them from leaving comments so I'm hesitant but hey let's see...

My main thought is, I was so glad to see this brought up, as I find comments like on this site, can often be just as interesting as the articles. Fostering a community that takes part and share their ideas often to the benefit of all is something worth pushing for :)