@colinwalker I missed that (looks like you did it just before I showed up here, and it’s not mentioned in the bug)—but it seems like that code makes it impossible ever to have comments off, i.e., any time the post is written to the db, comments are forced on, rather than just when a post is created via XML-RPC. (“Seems” = I edited a post that M.b had made comments-closed when originally published, didn’t check the “Enable comments” box during editing, saved the updated post, and the post had “Enable comments” checked afterwards.) This is maybe not a problem for most use-cases, but the code’s effects definitely aren’t restricted to XML-RPC actions.

I did some exploration when I first noticed the bug, and I think the XML-RPC checks described in this comment are what’s needed, but I’ve never had the time to wrap my head around it all and write/test it.