An array of strings works well here! Also, you can always preprocess to remove comments before validating!

If you're preprocessing, you might as well just `grep -v ^#` and support 'real' comments.

There's power to it being valid JSON, though; it can be stored in databases optimized for JSON payloads, and edited with JSON editors. There's a real agility to liberally sprinkling JSONFields and JSON code editors across an auto-generated admin interface like the Django admin system, knowing that you can leave breadcrumbs for colleagues, and that anything starting with a `__` is fair game for comments any time you see such a key name.