We request clients to follow an article to get updates when it's updated. Adding a comment helps alert the client that the article has been updated by us.To prevent spam messages, we need the ability to disable public comments while retaining internal comments that are customer-facing.
Basically, we want to post a comment so all clients that are following an article will get an update from us only - blocking clients from posting a comment that would send a notification to everyone that opted to follow the article.

