Since I generally look to the comments of a post first, and close the tab if there are none.. then I don't read sites that have closed or missing comments sections.

I can understand the decision from CopyBlogger's perspective. Taking the effort to host a conversation only makes sense when you're actually interested in that conversation. But as Sonia makes perfectly clear in those comments (on a different site than their own, hilariously enough), they're not interested in a conversation at all, they're only really interested in selling product. This quote says it all, to me:

In an ideal world, I’d actually rather they spend that 10 minutes clicking through to more of our work than spend it reading the comments.

See, they are only interested in pushing their product to their audience, not in having their audience actually think about it. They're not interesting in having a two way conversation or getting any real form of feedback, or doing community building, or anything of that sort. "Look at more of our stuff, so you might be more inclined to give us some cash for it."

It's an old-school mentality, a lot like publishing a newspaper. Sure, newspapers once had "letters to the editor", but those were relatively few and far between. They were not front-page, or near the articles themselves. The newspaper business was firstly a business, and the goal was to sell newspapers. Everything else was marketing. The stories themselves often little more than filler.

In this sense, encouraging others to have those conversations "on social media" is basically a marketing ploy. In other words, don't talk about our content here, talk about it everywhere else and help spread the word for us. Build those linkbacks. It's a sales tactic. It might even be a good one. But it only works on people mildly interested in their content to begin with.

So, if all you're interested in is to stand on your soap box and preach to the masses, perhaps selling them some fine baubles in the process, then certainly having comments makes no sense.

But I'm not interested in their content, or their services, or their marketing. I'm interested in the conversation surrounding it. So, I'll probably never look at CopyBlogger's blog, or services, or marketing, because they no longer have anything that might even vaguely interest me.