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Disqus, a dark commenting system

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Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#141

Post by nickjj »

MisterTea wrote: post #121
throw14082020 wrote: post #47

The author of the post runs a competitor called Hyvor Talk (he discloses this at the end). I've had hyvor talk for more than a year. I don't run a blog thats very popular, but it has been quite easy to integrate (I use React, Gatsby/ static side generation, and Hyvor Talk has a react component). An example of the system is at the bottom of that blog post. There used to be a free tier, but now there isn't. I am only s…

Can I ask an honest question: Why do you want to allow random people to leave comments on your blog and be responsible for them? I just don't see the value and feel that it just adds technical and security overhead, invites spam, and possibly the need to waste time moderating trash comments. Many blogs that I have visited which demonstrate or explain something technical with a comment section has: spam, accolades suc…

> I just don't see the value and feel that it just adds technical and security overhead, invites spam, and possibly the need to waste time moderating trash comments.

I've been running a tech blog for 5+ years now and it has thousands of comments.

I happen to be using Disqus (not proudly, it is what it is), and I've only ever had to moderate a few comments. Disqus does a pretty good job at stopping blatant spam. Sometimes you get those people who reply with "Nice article, have you checked out example.com?" where it's clear they are just trying to drop a link to their service. But these rarely happen.

I like comments because it creates a sense of community, and sometimes with tech articles things get outdated so it's nice to wake up to see a comment saying something has changed. It's a good reminder to go in there and update your content.

I remember one of my Docker posts having something like 500 comments over the years (around setting up WSL 1 and Docker). The overall strategy worked and most comments were "Thanks, worked perfectly!" but there was a decent chunk of folks asking for tech support because it didn't work for them. Those were really beneficial to me because it helped discover some edge cases, some of which I reported back to Docker directly.

I'm a firm believer that if you're going to put stuff out there it's your responsibility to own it from beginning to end. That means writing it, making sure it's accurate, keeping it up to date, answering questions and everything in between.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#143

Post by jonnycomputer »

I miss the golden age of blogs, bulletin boards, and of mailing lists, frankly. They are still out there, of course, but focus seems to have shifted. Twitter is so much more immediate, and I think it has displaced blog post consumption. To our detriment in many ways.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#144

Post by coldtea »

MisterTea wrote: post #121
throw14082020 wrote: post #47

The author of the post runs a competitor called Hyvor Talk (he discloses this at the end). I've had hyvor talk for more than a year. I don't run a blog thats very popular, but it has been quite easy to integrate (I use React, Gatsby/ static side generation, and Hyvor Talk has a react component). An example of the system is at the bottom of that blog post. There used to be a free tier, but now there isn't. I am only s…

Can I ask an honest question: Why do you want to allow random people to leave comments on your blog and be responsible for them? I just don't see the value and feel that it just adds technical and security overhead, invites spam, and possibly the need to waste time moderating trash comments. Many blogs that I have visited which demonstrate or explain something technical with a comment section has: spam, accolades suc…

>Can I ask an honest question: Why do you want to allow random people to leave comments on your blog and be responsible for them?

Because they enjoy the conversation that ensues?

>Many blogs that I have visited which demonstrate or explain something technical with a comment section has: spam, accolades such as "great post thanks!" (not bad but kind of useless), and one I frequently see, broken English asking the author something like "please explaining how to building [complex thing] using circuit you post".

That might be true for most/all technical blogs, it's not true for other kinds of blogs.

>Want to leave me a comment? Email me or go away.

That doesn't foster a community of discussion.

See blogs like LessWrong, Lambda the Ultimate and such.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#146

Post by jwr »

This is so amusing to me — I remember when Disqus was being built and beginning to gain traction, lofty ideas of "comments and discussions done right" were being thrown around.

I never bought in to the hype, and considered carefully whether I want to "outsource" and give away comments and discussions to a third party, becoming tied to them and all the data tracking/gathering that they might choose to do in the future.

Fast forward 10 years or so, and here we are :-)

Own your data, people. Don't give it away just because something is nice and shiny today. Don't outsource data. And don't write articles only to post them on Facebook, LinkedIn or Medium (or Google+, remember that?).

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#147

Post by coldtea »

spinningslate wrote: post #70
throw14082020 wrote: post #47

The author of the post runs a competitor called Hyvor Talk (he discloses this at the end). I've had hyvor talk for more than a year. I don't run a blog thats very popular, but it has been quite easy to integrate (I use React, Gatsby/ static side generation, and Hyvor Talk has a react component). An example of the system is at the bottom of that blog post. There used to be a free tier, but now there isn't. I am only s…

I'm conflicted about the free tier thing. On the one hand, I get that personal/non-commercial sites don't generate revenue - so shelling out for a comment system is unattractive. On the other hand: the whole reason that shady, dark pattern, privacy killers like disqus exist is because people won't pay for stuff. It's at least partly cultural. We'll pay for hosting, or internet access. Why won't we pay for other servi…

>On the other hand: the whole reason that shady, dark pattern, privacy killers like disqus exist is because people won't pay for stuff.

Not only for that. Also because they can make extra money off of it.

So no reason to not have "shady, dark pattern, privacy killers" even to services your customers pay for.

It's because of a focus on quality and responsibility that you don't do it, not because "we already make money since our service is non-free, so let's leave the extra ad money on the table".

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#149

Post by dannyw »

tyingq wrote: post #148

I wonder if anyone has considered using Gmail or another free email provider to be their comment backer. You get an API that already supports threading.

Someone sends a very bad link (eg CP) and all of your google accounts get nuked immediately without any chance of appeal.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#150

Post by seanhunter »

Daho0n wrote: post #34
seanhunter wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair to say this is necessary but not sufficient. GDPR covers users within GDPR countries but also European data subjects wherever they are in the world.

This gets repeated over and over on HN but it isn't true. I feel this is because so many try to make GDPR seem too hard and breaking everything (likely people with something to lose). GDPR is for data in the EU . That is it. Not data outside the EU and not people outside the EU. An American in the EU is covered, an EU citizen in the US is not. What you are saying would require that the EU could create laws that were…

Hmm. I actually said that because that's what the GDPR training that I was forced to undertake by my employer taught me. That being said, reading the reguglation now shows me that was a misunderstanding.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

That being said it wouldn't require the EU to create laws which have jurisdiction above the US supreme court - if a company has any activity within Europe the European courts can act. There are other examples - for example UK libel law allows people under certain circumstances to sue for libel in the UK even if both parties are not UK citizens and the libel itself occurred outside the UK. Another example is the US CFTC which claims jurisdiction over all swaps transactions even if both parties are non-US and the swap itself happened outside the US.

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