Substack seems to have fostered a pretty good commenting environment for the little I've seen. Especially from authors like George Saunders writing non-political / education-focused "newsletters" (i.e., blogs). In part, this seems to be because of forced login, and the fact that you have a single, shared identity for all publications on the platform (thereby increasing the value of … civility?). But also, of course, the commenters are often limited to paying subscribers, so they are all on the "same team" as it were in a way public, completely open blogs / articles aren't.
Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?
141–147 of 147 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?
#142Except for HN, which has dang's excellent moderation.
But HN is more of a meta-blog.
Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?
#143On Substack there are some blogs with extremely active comment sections. https://astralcodexten.substack.com https://doomberg.substack.com https://dubnationhq.com Are some examples. Disclaimer: I work at Substack.
How are they moderated?
Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?
#144Comments Expectation = Great Conversations, Learning, Networking
Comments Reality = Bots, Spam, Strong opinions, showing off etc.
Enjoy writing. Great content will find its way out.
Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?
#145[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?
#146On Substack there are some blogs with extremely active comment sections. https://astralcodexten.substack.com https://doomberg.substack.com https://dubnationhq.com Are some examples. Disclaimer: I work at Substack.
How are they moderated?
Substack only runs spam detection. The writers can delete comments on their blogs for any reason if they want to do so.
Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?
#147The problem isn't having comments on your blog, it's having locally scoped identities to comment on your blog. It essentially removes all cost for "destructive" participation, whether it be spam, harassment or other trolling. This is solved either by moving commenting entirely off-site to a larger network, or by using identities from a larger scope.
Shameless plug: I built Cactus Comments ( https://cactus.chat/ ). It's an open-source comment system federated on the Matrix ( https://matrix.org/ ) network. This means you can use your Matrix identity to comment on any site that uses Cactus, without the tracking of something like disqus. Works well with static site generators too.
My blog using Cactus Comments for reference: https://karmanyaah.malhotra.cc/
There aren't too many useful or any toxic comments, but I attribute that more to the lack of readership and interest than anything else.