41–50 of 63 posts
What works best for me is to add a link to the fediverse, linkedin and sometimes HN threads of comments when I publish a post. It's also a very low tech solution :)
I wonder how that scales. I'm sure it wouldn't matter too much for a small personal blog but I assume the mastodon server wouldn't be very happy if the API was queried at a high rate.
Yeah, I made a note of that. I'm not sure anything I've written to my cheesy blog has hit HN before, so this is probably the biggest test I'm going to get. If it were going to get any bigger, I'd want my own Mastodon server. Edit: this is also why I made it an explicit user action to load the comments.
(but just having users click a button is likely to be more than enough)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You would prefer to create a new account on every blog you visit and wish to comment on?
Usually blogs don't require creating an account to leave comments. Why present this false alternative when the common thing to do is just leaving a comment without creating an account?
When I publish something I like not shouting into the void so I want comments , but I also don't want to give a platform to anyone and everyone on my blog. What works best for me is to add a link to the fediverse, linkedin and sometimes HN threads of comments when I publish a post. It's also a very low tech solution :) https://ergaster.org/posts/2024/03/06-welcoming-feedback/
At the same time, I am an opportunist — sometimes it is Reddit, sometimes it is ix Xm, and sometimes it is here, the Hacker News. Different posts resonate with different audiences; and I don't want to link to a ghost town.
One issue is that there is no such thing as "the default platform for discussions"—no matter which one you choose, only a small fraction of readers will be interested in participating.
Anyone else weighed up the two approaches, I'm still on the fence tbh.
I can't think of something more hostile than requiring an account on a 3rd party, totally unrelated, platform to post a comment on a blog. I'll literally take ads and tracking over it.
I could add a button to swap the comments out for ads and tracking. ;) To your point, though, I don't expect anyone without an account already to post, but my target audience largely already has such accounts.
This is a ridiculous expectation. Virtually nobody uses Mastodon, especially since BlueSky now is the open platform of choice.
But even without this, Twitter-like websites for me and a lot of other people have absolutely no usecase, despite being in the audience who could read your blog. Expecting all your visitors to have an account in nonsensical.
When I publish something I like not shouting into the void so I want comments , but I also don't want to give a platform to anyone and everyone on my blog. What works best for me is to add a link to the fediverse, linkedin and sometimes HN threads of comments when I publish a post. It's also a very low tech solution :) https://ergaster.org/posts/2024/03/06-welcoming-feedback/
I took a similar approach to linking to a comment thread, see e.g. Reddit links from https://p.migdal.pl/blog/2025/02/markdown-saves . At the same time, I am an opportunist — sometimes it is Reddit, sometimes it is ix Xm, and sometimes it is here, the Hacker News. Different posts resonate with different audiences; and I don't want to link to a ghost town. One issue is that there is no such thing as "the default platf…
Isn't this what the various linkback mechanisms tried to solve? It seems like the ideal solution: let anyone comment wherever they want, from a tweet to their own follow-up blog post, and connect them all via automated notifications.
I have tried to get my static site generator (Lektor) to work with Mastodon and generate my Mastodon posts as a blog. I haven't had success yet because Lektor is obsolete and kind of garbage, but Mastodon's API is great.
I really like this solution, though. Just write a blog post and link to it from Mastodon. That solves the problem of Mastodon's text limit and of small hosted instances needing to regularly delete content to stay under their account limit.
As a technical feat and expression of FOSS integration this is cool but I don't know about the utility of it since any actual human being reading these comments will already be reading them on Mastodon. It is definitely better than the cancer that is Disqus though.
Reminds me of this post on adding BlueSky likes: https://whitep4nth3r.com/blog/show-bluesky-likes-on-blog-pos... If I would want comments on my blog I would try to integrate BlueSky and Mastodon comments.
I've been considering trying to get to a similar result, but considering making my actual blog _be_ a (minimal) ActivityPub sever with a si gle user/actor such that posting to the blog is publishing an ActivityPub post, and have replies to that post coming directly into the blogs own inbox, then show up as comments. Anyone else weighed up the two approaches, I'm still on the fence tbh.