You must be kidding. There are tons of blogging CMS systems around. The world isn’t just wp or blogger.com

For personal installations there’s not that many. WordPress and Typepad are the classics and Typepad is much less powerful than WP.
If you’re talking about free online CMS systems then yes, there are quite a few. From Livejournal (and derivants) to scienceblogs and whetever else. That does not take away from the comparison I made.

but wordpress not having comment preview is also a pain in the behind. How do I know I did the blockquote cite=”” right? Ah yeah, I will find out once I posted my comment

This is one of my gripe with wordpress.com as well but I’m hoping they will eventually implement something. However this is easily fixable in a self-hosted wordpresss installation since you can use both preview and edit plugins (indeed some themes come with it built it) or you can use something like Intense Debate as I have started doing now (you only see it in new posts or ones without old comments.)

Anyway, have fun there! (found your weblog through Planet EL/LAK)

Thanks and don’t be a stranger

only to find out if someone might have responded to that comment of mine on a 3 months old post?

Well I consider these requests quite low and small compared to a normal http request for the page itself. I’m guessing also that if you close the comments of a post after a while, new http requests are refused.
Still, a self-hosted wordpress gives you other options as well. There is both a plugin for notifying by email (subscribe to comments, I had it but disabled it recently) and/or you can outsource the comments to something like intense debate and let them handle the horrible load

If you need to follow a conversation you should subscribe to the commend feed.

So I will generate hundreds of HTTP requests into the indefinite future (since: “when do I stop requesting that feed?”), only to find out if someone might have responded to that comment of mine on a 3 months old post? I don’t like that approach, neither as a commenter on foreign blogs, nor as a weblog owner and server admin.

I can’t comment on the admin interface, since the last time I actually saw a worpress one was back in 2006; I believe much has changed since.

And I fail to see what you can do with wordpress’ extras that you can’t add in a blogger blog.

But anyway, I should stop defending blogger now; I am looking for a way out myself. Just not the obvious one.

Oh, and you don’t have to pay blogger to have the blog in your own domain. Just purchase the domain and you are set.

By the way, if you use the “new” themes on blogger, customization is really easier; you can write no html at all if you want.

My immediate gripe was going to be about how as a commenter, I have no idea if my comment was replied to or if the discussion has gone on without just going and checking since there’s no “notify me of followup comments via email” option like on blogger, but then you have it. You’re the first. Is that one of those features you have to pay extra for? If not, why doesn’t every WP blog have that?

All wordpress blogs provide a comments feed you can subscribe if you want to. The email notification has to be enabled seperately (if not provided through a plugin).

This was a temporary solution anyway, and as soon as I have hosting and software sorted out I am getting out of there, too.

So what do you have in mind?

I am leaning to something really simple. Like ikiwiki. Leaves less potential security holes, too, since static pages are somewhat difficult to hack

Although blogger templates suck by default, you can go in an edit the entire code, as I have done to give myself 3 columns. I’ve heard from WP people that such flexibility is not possible, at least not unless you pay $$$. Care to comment?

Yes, I know this issue should be resolved for the new installations at least, but the glass is really broken now.

Well, I was talking more about free uses in wordpress.com, not self-hosted ones. In a self-hosted installation, errors can indeed happen but I’m not certain if it’s the SW’s fault unless I know the circumstances. In any case, as far as self-hosted installations go you only have WP as an option. Sure, you can go with drupal or joomla but they were not designed for blogging in mind so they have some limitations.

consider worpress proper bloated, too, and since I didn’t really use the features (or any plugin – bar akismet for comment spam), I have no real incentive to use it.

You’re really missing the point of having a self-hosted installation then. But how can WordPress be bloated when you’re not using plugins? Basic WP installations are quite lean.

This was a temporary solution anyway, and as soon as I have hosting and software sorted out I am getting out of there, too.

So what do you have in mind?