Joel Johnson, veteran tech blogger and new managing editor of Animal New York, makes the case that comments aren’t just [pick one: abrasive/abusive/nonsensical/useless] — they’re bad for business. Along with the usual complaints, there’s this:

But here’s the new thing: I’ve had two separate discussions with friends who run mid-sized internet properties — we’re talking high hundreds of thousands to millions of unique users a month — and they’ve both recently completed heavy analysis on their traffic and come to the somewhat shocking conclusion that the people who actually read comments are a small fraction of one percent of their entire readership.

I’m not talking about people who comment, which is an even smaller percentage. I’m talking about people who read comments, the supposed traffic-and-revenue generating nebulous “community” that supports nascent internet media publications and make all that engineering and moderator staffing worthwhile. Less than a percent. And if you measure the number of people who actually scroll to the end of a post and read all the comments, it’s even less.

Unsurprisingly, comments are closed on his piece.

Ken Fisher, founder of Ars Technica, concurs with the estimate:

@alexismadrigal @joeljohnson At Ars we once counted it, got something like 2% total in a month. So very agreeable IMO. Also, sad because

— Ken Fisher (@kenfisher) April 10, 2012

@alexismadrigal @joeljohnson I think we (Internet journo types) pay entirely too much attention to them, to the neglect of others.

— Ken Fisher (@kenfisher) April 10, 2012

(Worth noting that Ars puts its comments on a separate page from the stories themselves, requiring an extra click.)