I have to say that I think Daring Fireball is better _without_ comments. I presume that this site was set up without John Gruber's consent. This raises the question: Is this a spam blog?
It may not be a "spam" blog, but if this is without John's permission, it is a wholesale lifting of copyrighted material that can't possibly be considered "Fair Use".
Somebody will say "Yes it can", but no, it can't. Fair Use considers the quantity used, and using 100% of a substantial body of work is not fair use. Furthermore, even if this is satire, which I would consider dubious, the satire is not in the use of the original material. This can be proved by the fact that the "satire" still stands if you just provide a link back to the original work, then a comment section beneath that. This is actually not a bad idea for a site or family of sites, but only if it works by linking the original. You know, like reddit or HN, neither of which would be in a safe legal position if instead of linking to things they copied them onto the site in bulk.
Not in my opinion. For me, the defining characteristic of a spam blog is copied content surrounded by adverts. This design stays true to daringfireball.net, to the point that it still has ads from the Deck with DB referral links. So no, not a spam blog.
I tried to verify that the adverts used the same code, but I couldn't. Looking again I see that they do still use "DF" as the referral code, so I guess they aren't making any money from this. I take back my "spam blog" accusation! :)
Oh my, are the comments terrible. It's like folks are posting nonsense, just to prove John Gruber right. :P
There's some weird synergies between this and the conversations about comment quality kicked up by Engadget temporary shutting down their comment system.
Unless you have a community really focused on good discussion with readers who treat each other with respect it's pointless to solicit comments on the web these days. It just drags down the quality content. I think it's difficult for writers to not be influenced by this small vocal minority who use web comments as an outlet for their mental health problems. Most of these comment trolls are no different than a crazy homeless person ranting & raving on the street. They just want an outlet.
(Either those comments are a bad attempt at satire or they perfectly illustrate just why Daring Fireball doesn't have comments.)