This is an old post, but I’d like to bring it to the foreground again (if I missed a newer follow-up, please let me know).
The benefit of static comments is long term: when the site is no longer active, it can still be used and archived in full, even at archive.org, really long-term.
Given Hugo’s speed, wouldn’t it be possible to simply regenerate the entire site after a new comment has been posted? As web-hook, basically?
This approach seems so obvious to me that I keep wondering why it hasn’t been pursued (or perhaps more likely: why I haven’t found it).
-jcw