2. I use Disqus and don't actually get much spam (maybe 1 spam post every 6 months, and it always gets flagged by Disqus) but there is often useful stuff in the comments. I think my blog would be much worse without the comments (and I wouldn't get the occasional "Thanks!" comments, which help me know that my posts aren't useless) :-)

Given the option, I would probably also just parse logs - I don't think Analytics is adding much on top of that; I just don't have that option using GH Pages. The reason I moved from AppEngine to GitHub was to stop messing with the code for my blog in an attempt to make me write more posts instead! =D