On Commenting
Saturday, May 9th, 2009 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charmianAn interesting post on commenting, and its sequel.
I personally feel that on the whole commenting/importing kefluffle, it's between the person importing and the commenter. In other words, if you don't approve of your comments being imported, you should take it up with the person on whose journal you left them. My perspective of it is also influenced, though, by the fact that I own a WP blog and WP.com account, and before DW, I was perfectly capable of importing all of my comments to a separate server anyway.
Anyhow, I have been long unsatisfied with the system on LJ/its clones where my deleted comments are not preserved somewhere in the system. I am of course fine with my comments no longer appearing on the journal where they were deleted, but I would like to somehow have access to them. It would be pretty cool IF we could indeed use Disqus on DW or LJ. Obviously this would be an optional feature, perhaps one only for paid members (if it were only for paid members, this wouldn't create a problem where free users could access a similar feature to what paid members have). But, it could actually increase interoperability, I think. It might even lessen DW server strain (though I'm not too up on the technical aspects of Disqus, so maybe not).
Allowing Disqus would allow DW users to access features which DW doesn't offer, or doesn't plan to offer because the programming or resource cost would be prohibitive, such as full text comment search, and banning commenters by IP address (not that this works v. well, but people do want it). Also, DW wouldn't be responsible for what occurred with Disqus or on it. (Although this might create abuse problems, because it wouldn't be clear whether things that happen in Disqus comments are technically violations of DW TOS because they might be said technically not to occur on DW...) On the other hand, I kind of wonder what Disqus's business plan is, really, though?
I use Disqus on my Tumblr. The main problem there, is that Disqus is not very well integrated into Tumblr. You can't see the link to leave comments, or a comment count, on the equivalent of the LJfriendslist on Tumblr, although you can see count when viewing the entry or the blog itself. This is a big problem, and discourages people from commenting using it.
Using Disqus you can easily leave both logged in comments, and logged out comments, that are attributed to a name, or just leave your name/email/website (I think this is a requested feature in DW), so that you can comment in a attributed way without going through the rigamarole of registering or using openID. Unfortunately you can't yet use openID w/Disqus, though.
Disqus allows people who enable it on their blog to see all comments left on their blog, search them, and moderate them. These comments can be displayed individually by time, or as threads (so an individual thread can be closed). Threading is optional.
Disqus also allows trackback and video comments (as options), as well as displaying social media reactions (such as Twitter, Digg, etc), or comment using their Facebook.
The theme of the comment section may be customized. The display of comments may be from oldest to newest, or by popularity. Popular threads and top commenters may also be displayed as blog widgets. Other Disqus users may also be made comment moderators. Comment screening is also possible; there is also both blacklisting and whitelisting, plus word filtering.
All in all, it's pretty much vastly more powerful; oh, and login is also persistent, which means you don't have to login for every Disqus using blog you see.
Also, I don't agree with the public mockery of the people who have concerns about comment importing. If one is really trying to advocate for DW or represent the DW userbase (not saying those people are necessarily trying to do that, I don't live in their heads), it's not really helpful.
Perhaps an alternate means of communication could be through pingbacks/trackbacks?
I personally feel that on the whole commenting/importing kefluffle, it's between the person importing and the commenter. In other words, if you don't approve of your comments being imported, you should take it up with the person on whose journal you left them. My perspective of it is also influenced, though, by the fact that I own a WP blog and WP.com account, and before DW, I was perfectly capable of importing all of my comments to a separate server anyway.
Anyhow, I have been long unsatisfied with the system on LJ/its clones where my deleted comments are not preserved somewhere in the system. I am of course fine with my comments no longer appearing on the journal where they were deleted, but I would like to somehow have access to them. It would be pretty cool IF we could indeed use Disqus on DW or LJ. Obviously this would be an optional feature, perhaps one only for paid members (if it were only for paid members, this wouldn't create a problem where free users could access a similar feature to what paid members have). But, it could actually increase interoperability, I think. It might even lessen DW server strain (though I'm not too up on the technical aspects of Disqus, so maybe not).
Allowing Disqus would allow DW users to access features which DW doesn't offer, or doesn't plan to offer because the programming or resource cost would be prohibitive, such as full text comment search, and banning commenters by IP address (not that this works v. well, but people do want it). Also, DW wouldn't be responsible for what occurred with Disqus or on it. (Although this might create abuse problems, because it wouldn't be clear whether things that happen in Disqus comments are technically violations of DW TOS because they might be said technically not to occur on DW...) On the other hand, I kind of wonder what Disqus's business plan is, really, though?
I use Disqus on my Tumblr. The main problem there, is that Disqus is not very well integrated into Tumblr. You can't see the link to leave comments, or a comment count, on the equivalent of the LJfriendslist on Tumblr, although you can see count when viewing the entry or the blog itself. This is a big problem, and discourages people from commenting using it.
Using Disqus you can easily leave both logged in comments, and logged out comments, that are attributed to a name, or just leave your name/email/website (I think this is a requested feature in DW), so that you can comment in a attributed way without going through the rigamarole of registering or using openID. Unfortunately you can't yet use openID w/Disqus, though.
Disqus allows people who enable it on their blog to see all comments left on their blog, search them, and moderate them. These comments can be displayed individually by time, or as threads (so an individual thread can be closed). Threading is optional.
Disqus also allows trackback and video comments (as options), as well as displaying social media reactions (such as Twitter, Digg, etc), or comment using their Facebook.
The theme of the comment section may be customized. The display of comments may be from oldest to newest, or by popularity. Popular threads and top commenters may also be displayed as blog widgets. Other Disqus users may also be made comment moderators. Comment screening is also possible; there is also both blacklisting and whitelisting, plus word filtering.
All in all, it's pretty much vastly more powerful; oh, and login is also persistent, which means you don't have to login for every Disqus using blog you see.
Also, I don't agree with the public mockery of the people who have concerns about comment importing. If one is really trying to advocate for DW or represent the DW userbase (not saying those people are necessarily trying to do that, I don't live in their heads), it's not really helpful.
Perhaps an alternate means of communication could be through pingbacks/trackbacks?
