Giscus is a cool comments management solution vis Github:
It lets users auth through Github then posts comments as discussions under your repo.
We use it here for instance: https://predibench.com/models
I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
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Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#52I blocked Disqus locally on my computer via /etc/hosts many years ago. Reason is very simply. Because comments as genre is almost useless.
You are putting comments on HN right now. i guess not entirelly useless then?
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#53I have an email address for comments at the bottom of my blog posts. If they can write me an email and it's something that contributes to the discussion, I'll include it in a comments section at the bottom of the post. For bigger discussions, cross-post to social is the way to go.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#54I’m in the process of converting a Wordpress blog to a static site. We did have significant comment traffic back in the day so I did look into how to maintain comment functionality. I found Comentario https://docs.comentario.app/en/ which is a standalone comments engine that can be self-hosted and linked to the blog page. Single stand alone Go executable, SQLite database - seems dead simple and has built-in ways to migrate Wordpress comments.
Still, since we do not get that many comments these days, I’ll probably postpone it and just provide a static render of existing / historical comments which does have value for archival and discussion purposes.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#55For everyone saying "just have the comments on social networking sites" - that fragments the conversation, makes people sign up to a service if they want to comment, and exposes them to ads on 3rd party sites. You also get no control over the level of abuse, misinformation, and spam on those external sites. The joy of having comments on your own site is that you can moderate the bad-faith discussions and curate a fri…
Unless you're famous enough that everything you post gets to the top of Google, no one will read your content unless you post it to a social media platform with a curated audience. Literally no one but bots and AI crawlers. I mean, you have a whole list of crossposting links at the bottom of your own blog posts, including to HN and Mastodon, so you clearly understand. You wouldn't lose anything by limiting comments to just those curated social media platforms except spam and bots.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#56I just can't be bothered to have comments on my site. It adds nothing but headaches. Cross-posting articles to HN or Reddit for comments is a much nicer way, I think.
Yea, it's what modern blogs do. The discussions happen on social media and platforms where they are shared
This has disadvantages though! Often the threads on sites like HN/reddit get "archived" or lose traction and you cannot join the discussion if you don't happen to discover the article in the first few days of it getting published.
In blogs people can come along anytime and use comments to add additional information/context/perspectives, point out misunderstandings or outdated information, share updates, pose questions and start interesting conversations that do not have an expiration date on them.
The discussion for the article can be found on the same webpage by readers, they don't have to go looking on external sites, most of which have terrible searchability and now require logins just to view content and can delete threads and valuable discussions arbitrarily.
I just realised while writing this comment how much I miss web comment culture from the 00s.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#57I blocked Disqus locally on my computer via /etc/hosts many years ago. Reason is very simply. Because comments as genre is almost useless.
You are putting comments on HN right now. i guess not entirelly useless then?
OP wrote "almost useless" which, by definition, is also "not entirely useless".
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#58I think the concern of "blog comments" is best left to external platforms eg HN, Reddit etc What would be more useful would be an automated list of places where the post has been discussed (and maybe pull the top comments from there through API?)
There used to be a time when comments were attached to the posts. Where anyone could come, leave their name and a comment, and let the author know if any edits, misspellings, or how they liked the article. Social media ruined that. Everyone is now on their own soap box posting comments of drivel from their sub-optimal self-conscious parroting asinine talking points about how one characterized group of statistics ruin…
> Social media ruined that. Everyone is now on their own soap box posting comments of drivel from their sub-optimal self-conscious parroting asinine talking points about how one characterized group of statistics ruined it for everyone else.
Partially agree, partially disagree. Blog comments were already dead when SEO fraudsters discovered that "linkbacks" could be abused for spam even easier than comments were.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#59It's disgusting what the internet has become, in this case it's even more egregious that the author as far as I see isn't even making any commission off of these ads, not that that would justify it. And then you have companies like Google who will punish you intentionally for using tools to reduce the amount of spam you're exposed to on your own device. We need a better model of financially supporting websites and se…
> in this case it's even more egregious that the author as far as I see isn't even making any commission off of these ads
Yes. I think Disqus is trying to get money from the long tail of blogs that enabled Disqus in the past and never bothered to look up for the policy changes. I am sure they started with small, non-invasive ads and eventually got bigger until we get in the situation that we are today.
So even if someone enabled Disqus in the past because they seemed a reasonable system a few years ago, their blogs are now an ad farm and the original owner may have zero idea since it is a blog they abandoned years ago. Heck, my old Wordpress blog that I don't even remember the password is probably an ad field nowadays that is probably generating pennies for one of those companies.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#60Mailing lists are still the superior format. The barrier to entry is a feature and not a bug.
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