This depends heavily on the website in question and how well the comments are moderated/curated. The Online Photographer [0] is my goto example of a blog where the comments are excellent (and a key part of the value gained from visiting the site). The trick in this case: every comment goes through a moderation queue before it's posted. Some then get featured as part of the article.

[0]: https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photogr...

> have we stopped to consider whether we need comments at all?

You are literally commenting on HN, so it must depend on the community more than commenting system.

And that’s just it: on HN, rather than on the original article.

>My personal experience is that comments are usually content-thin, and not worth reading.

Note that you write this in a comment.

Was it not obvious that I was talking about sites that use hosted comment solutions, and thus don't have discussion as a core feature?

Discussion can be a core feature (core as in "important to the site") whether it's implemented as hosted comments or built into their web app.

There are blogs using Discqus that have excellent discussions...

I’ve thought about it as well.

I think for communities like HN, the real content actually is the comments-- or rephrased, HN uniquely stands out amongst other news aggregators because of its community. You could say the community sentiment should be reflected through the content submitted, but I just don’t believe that’s true.

However, I don’t think everything on earth needs comments. I honestly never understood the point of blog posts having comments, but I’ve never run a successful blog that anyone looks at either so maybe I don’t get it.

Agreed, and communities don't outsource their comments. It seems to me that things like Disqus aren't useful, since if you use a third party service for your comments, they're mostly an afterthought and could well be omitted.

Comments help fixing issues in a decentralized way, which is awesome. They also help develop stickiness, like HN (or addiction if you fall into dopamine addiction). Youtube would never be popular without the comments, which help criticize the video and get other viewpoints.

But it seems they aren’t valuable _enough_ that someone would develop a browser extension to comment on any webpage —or, since such extensions have been tried a lot actually, that people would actually use them.

Entire communities exist around blogs with comments. That's not something you can easily re-create with email.

So it depends on your use case.