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Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

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Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#91

Post by eqvinox »

carlbordum wrote: post #70
eqvinox wrote: post #27

The 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.

That's not particularly useful without a reputation system.

In particular, any federated identity provider has a problem for this use case in that malicious actors can simply create their own domain - or multiple - and spam/troll from those. Blacklists essentially don't work as long as new domains can be created, so you end up with a whitelist, which kinda counteracts the federation concept.

It needs something where getting blemishes on your ID is actually something you want to avoid. And where fresh IDs is not effective to bypass this.

Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#92

Post by donatj »

notacoward wrote: post #77
donatj wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think everyone who writes a book or stages a play does so only because of ego Yes. Especially in this day and age when there are other options, like a Blog , with a comment section. You write a book because you want something to put on your resume. A notable exception here would be Andy Weir's "The Martian", which started as a blog, with a comment section, where he received many corrections as he developed i…

Only ? You can't imagine a selfless motivation? Someone wanting to share or help others without requiring recompense and/or feedback? Just want to be clear here.

The thought that anyone would want to read what you have to say alone is ego.

> share or help others without requiring recompense

Most authors of book seek actual monetary compensation

Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#93

Post by donatj »

cypher_31 wrote: post #84
donatj wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think everyone who writes a book or stages a play does so only because of ego Yes. Especially in this day and age when there are other options, like a Blog , with a comment section. You write a book because you want something to put on your resume. A notable exception here would be Andy Weir's "The Martian", which started as a blog, with a comment section, where he received many corrections as he developed i…

Just as a counter point, I wrote a book because I wanted to prove to myself that I could. It will probably never see the light of day, but I did it and I found the experience valuable. But, maybe you are just talking about people who sell books? In that case, I think the majority of authors are not getting rich, famous, or hired for the number of books on their resume.

> I wanted to prove to myself that I could

I'm pretty sure the need to prove yourself to yourself is the truest literary form of freudian ego.

Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#94

Post by notacoward »

donatj wrote: post #92
notacoward wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only ? You can't imagine a selfless motivation? Someone wanting to share or help others without requiring recompense and/or feedback? Just want to be clear here.

The thought that anyone would want to read what you have to say alone is ego. > share or help others without requiring recompense Most authors of book seek actual monetary compensation

> The thought that anyone would want to read what you have to say alone is ego.

I hope that was a generic "you" and not intended as an insult. In any case, it's untrue except for a definition of "ego" so expansive as to be meaningless. Is it ego to believe that some subset of people you already know and have some affinity with might derive some benefit or enjoyment from something you write? For many bloggers the mere possibility of that is sufficient to put the writing in a public place instead of a private diary, but they'd also be quite content if that didn't happen.

I'm trying hard not to be as derogatory as you are with your implication that others are thin-skinned or egotistical, but I suspect that this goalpost-moving on "ego" reflects your own motivations more than any general reality. So does the "weirdness" you mention. Perhaps you should consider that other people are motivated differently than you are and that's OK. There's nothing weird or egotistical at all about wanting to communicate with others in a non-transactional way, for its own sake.

Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#95

Post by kkfx »

Comments are a thing of the past... People miss a place to "talk" like classical usenet so use and abuse any kind of "comment" and "social" tool for that, on the other side of the spectrum comments serve surveillance capitalism needs for profiling and insights.

If you want "comments" back you need to be back on usenet and when, perhaps out of a discussion, you decide to made an article instead of a post you just do it on your website (more than "blog", witch are effectively a thing of the past for other reasons) and post the relevant link a a new thread in a relevant ng. Comments happen there, a proper tool for the relative job :-)

Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#96

Post by jrnichols »

They were a thing of the past shortly after they started. I remember back in my blogging days with Movable Type and I wrote an entry that angered A LOT of fans of a popular radio show host. It was impossible for me to keep up with the offensive and hateful comments they were leaving on literally every single post, so I ended up disabling the entire thing.

It didn't get much better with Blogger either. Now much of the time I see Facebook Comments embedded, or something like Disqus. Comment horror stories didn't help Digg much, if I recall correctly.

bots, spam, and uncontrollable political nonsense took most of them out. I don't think it's too weird. It takes a lot of the stress off of the blog owners, and to some extent, the responsibility.

Blogs weren't alone either.

https://www.niemanlab.org/2015/09/what-happened-after-7-news...

Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#97

Post by jboynyc »

warrenm wrote: post #81
tjansen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's an idea for a product: find discussions on HN, Twitter, Reddit, FB etc about your blog post and embed them on the blog where you would usually see the comments. Not sure how big the market is, but...

There are ways to automatically grab feeds of specific hashtags on Twitter Maybe post your blog with something "unique[ish]"?

Or turn tweets into webmentions using https://brid.gy/

Re: Ask HN: Are blog comments a thing of the past?

#100

Post by mdoms »

One of my most memorable and proud moments was when I was a junior developer. I wrote a blog about ScriptCS and how it worked (in the very early days when documentation was sparse so it took significant research). One of the (very few) comments on my blog was Glenn Block - a man I considered a borderline legend in my .NET field - commenting very positively and thanking me for my effort. It seems so minor and silly now but it was an incredibly energising experience.

I guess people are getting the same kinds of feedback through Twitter now but it feels so much more... I dunno, inauthentic?

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