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All (?) upcoming alternatves to Disqus: (my own listed last) - Mozilla's Talk, https://github.com/coralproject/talk https://github.com/coralproject/talk. Open

All (?) upcoming alternatves to Disqus: (my own listed last) - Mozilla's Talk, https://github.com/coralproject/talk https://github.com/coralproject/talk. Open source, install yourself. - Discourse, https://www.discourse.org/ https://www.discourse.org/. One needs to navigate to a separate page, to post a comment. Not threaded. Min $20/month. Open source. Facebook and Gmail login. - Isso: https://posativ.org/isso/ https://posativ.org/isso/. Open source, install on your own server. - Commento, https://github.com/adtac/commento https://github.com/adtac/commento. Open source. Moderation, spam-protection and hosting is under development. - Schnack, https://www.vis4.net/blog/2017/10/hello-schnack/ https://www.vis4.net/blog/2017/10/hello-schnack/. Open source, install yourself. Has GitHub and Facebook login. - HostedComments, https://www.hostedcomments.com/ https://www.hostedcomments.com/. Proprietory. Min $10/month - Remarbox, https://www.remarkbox.com/ https://www.remarkbox.com/. Proprietory. Min $4/month - Gitalk. https://github.com/gitalk/gitalk https://github.com/gitalk/gitalk. Open source, install yourself. Comments stored as GitHub issues. - https://github.com/skx/e-comments https://github.com/skx/e-comments. Open source, install yourself. - And my own: EffectiveDiscussions: https://www.effectivediscussions.org/blog-comments https://www.effectivediscussions.org/blog-comments. Open source, or $2 per month. Has Facebook and Gmail login.

PuercoPop 9y ago
A better alternative is to have no comments at all (not joking). If the 'activation energy' of replying is higher, more thought will go into the reply.
- puranjay 9y ago
  I've started emailing people if I like what they've written. Leads to much better discussions and relationships
- bufferoverflow 9y ago
  Comments are often more interesting than the post itself. Pretty much all of Reddit is based on that notion.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    And so is HN, I dare say.
  - tedunangst 9y ago
    Maybe. There's something like a conservation of interest. The best posts often have very tedious comments. The best comments are often corrections to incorrect articles.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    Perhaps that's why we seem to be separating comments out into dedicated sites like Reddit and HN, rather than continuing to host comments directly on blogs?
- shostack 9y ago
  Interestingly enough, it seems like a lot of blogs these days have entirely disabled comments. I'm not clear on all the reasons why, but definitely noticeable.
  - agentgt 9y ago
    Likewise I have noticed higher end consumer products out of luxury boutiques do not show reviews.
  - stevekemp 9y ago
    Sometimes this is just to avoid spam. I setup a simple API for testing for comment-spam in real-time here: https://blogspam.net/ https://blogspam.net/
judah 9y ago
As a blogger of 15 years, the issue to me now is that comments almost always take place in Facebook or Twitter, not on my blog. I blog. Then post the link to social media. I'll get tens or hundreds of comments on social media, but maybe 3 on the blog itself. Do any of these commenting systems have a way to say, "Any comments that happen on [Facebook/Twitter] should be added to the blog comment thread"?
- russellbeattie 9y ago
  https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/embedded-comments https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/embedded-commen...
  - judah 9y ago
    That's not it. I don't want Facebook comments embedded in my blog. I want comments that were made on Facebook to appear on my blog's native comment system. Outside the walled garden.
    - meestaahjoshee 9y ago
      what's the average facebook user/friend's incentive to leave a comment on your blog rather than on facebook? if they leave a comment for you, sure I would put it on the blog. but if people are discussing the article, isn't it easier to do on facebook?
      - spondyl 9y ago
        I believe they're imagining a system where any comments on Facebook/Twitter etc would be essentially mirrored. Perhaps a webhook of sorts that pushes comments discussing a link to the link itself and would then be imported into their own comments database. Of course, I doubt Facebook would do this seeing as there's no tangible benefit to them
- lazerwalker 9y ago
  What's troublesome about systems like that is they invariably end up pulling FB's tracking code onto your blog.
y4mi 9y ago
just for completion's sake: most people that use a service such as disqus use it in tandem with a static blog hosted on maybe github, gitlab or whatnot and these have a really neat alternative to this setup, and that's actually committing the comments automatically instead of serving them through js. there is a FOSS appliance for just that, and it even offers a free hosted service https://staticman.net/ https://staticman.net/
- KajMagnus 9y ago
  Interesting :- ) That one should have been in the list too yes. — I'd be worried about Denial-of-Service attacks & moderation. What if the blog gets popular? And "angry people" posts 9999 spammy comments. Even if one deletes them from the blog, they'd sill be in the commit history? (but I want a somewhat clean commit history that is readable to me) And what if someone illegally post personally-identifiable-info (PII), even if one deletes it, it'd still be in the commit log, which I think would be illegal? Maybe StaticMan could rewrite the Git history to delete flagged & deleted comments (e.g. comments with PII)... But if it does that, the rebased history will cause problems when you try to push your next blog post to the repo. Maybe if blog comments were in a separate repository whose history could be rewritten, without interfering with the main repo to which one pushes one's new blog comments.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    Staticman supports GitHub PRs so you can vet/flag/delete comments as a PR and they don't end up in main branch commit history if you don't merge the PR. If you delete the PR branch eventually git gc in sync with GitHub's branch cleanup process will cleanup the dead commits, so there's a window when where that PII will be available, but it would eventually get tossed.
    - KajMagnus 9y ago
      Ok, that seems like a lot safer, thanks for explaining
the_common_man 9y ago
isso hasn't seen releases in a while https://github.com/posativ/isso/releases https://github.com/posativ/isso/releases
zaarn 9y ago
I can recommend Isso, it's rather easy to install and use. It also seems like the project is working on a moderation UI, I'm waiting on that.

PuercoPop 9y ago

A better alternative is to have no comments at all (not joking). If the 'activation energy' of replying is higher, more thought will go into the reply.

puranjay 9y ago
I've started emailing people if I like what they've written. Leads to much better discussions and relationships
bufferoverflow 9y ago
Comments are often more interesting than the post itself. Pretty much all of Reddit is based on that notion.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  And so is HN, I dare say.
- tedunangst 9y ago
  Maybe. There's something like a conservation of interest. The best posts often have very tedious comments. The best comments are often corrections to incorrect articles.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  Perhaps that's why we seem to be separating comments out into dedicated sites like Reddit and HN, rather than continuing to host comments directly on blogs?
shostack 9y ago
Interestingly enough, it seems like a lot of blogs these days have entirely disabled comments. I'm not clear on all the reasons why, but definitely noticeable.
- agentgt 9y ago
  Likewise I have noticed higher end consumer products out of luxury boutiques do not show reviews.
- stevekemp 9y ago
  Sometimes this is just to avoid spam. I setup a simple API for testing for comment-spam in real-time here: https://blogspam.net/ https://blogspam.net/

judah 9y ago

As a blogger of 15 years, the issue to me now is that comments almost always take place in Facebook or Twitter, not on my blog. I blog. Then post the link to social media. I'll get tens or hundreds of comments on social media, but maybe 3 on the blog itself. Do any of these commenting systems have a way to say, "Any comments that happen on [Facebook/Twitter] should be added to the blog comment thread"?

russellbeattie 9y ago
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/embedded-comments https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/embedded-commen...
- judah 9y ago
  That's not it. I don't want Facebook comments embedded in my blog. I want comments that were made on Facebook to appear on my blog's native comment system. Outside the walled garden.
  - meestaahjoshee 9y ago
    what's the average facebook user/friend's incentive to leave a comment on your blog rather than on facebook? if they leave a comment for you, sure I would put it on the blog. but if people are discussing the article, isn't it easier to do on facebook?
    - spondyl 9y ago
      I believe they're imagining a system where any comments on Facebook/Twitter etc would be essentially mirrored. Perhaps a webhook of sorts that pushes comments discussing a link to the link itself and would then be imported into their own comments database. Of course, I doubt Facebook would do this seeing as there's no tangible benefit to them
lazerwalker 9y ago
What's troublesome about systems like that is they invariably end up pulling FB's tracking code onto your blog.

y4mi 9y ago

just for completion's sake: most people that use a service such as disqus use it in tandem with a static blog hosted on maybe github, gitlab or whatnot and these have a really neat alternative to this setup, and that's actually committing the comments automatically instead of serving them through js. there is a FOSS appliance for just that, and it even offers a free hosted service https://staticman.net/ https://staticman.net/

KajMagnus 9y ago
Interesting :- ) That one should have been in the list too yes. — I'd be worried about Denial-of-Service attacks & moderation. What if the blog gets popular? And "angry people" posts 9999 spammy comments. Even if one deletes them from the blog, they'd sill be in the commit history? (but I want a somewhat clean commit history that is readable to me) And what if someone illegally post personally-identifiable-info (PII), even if one deletes it, it'd still be in the commit log, which I think would be illegal? Maybe StaticMan could rewrite the Git history to delete flagged & deleted comments (e.g. comments with PII)... But if it does that, the rebased history will cause problems when you try to push your next blog post to the repo. Maybe if blog comments were in a separate repository whose history could be rewritten, without interfering with the main repo to which one pushes one's new blog comments.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  Staticman supports GitHub PRs so you can vet/flag/delete comments as a PR and they don't end up in main branch commit history if you don't merge the PR. If you delete the PR branch eventually git gc in sync with GitHub's branch cleanup process will cleanup the dead commits, so there's a window when where that PII will be available, but it would eventually get tossed.
  - KajMagnus 9y ago
    Ok, that seems like a lot safer, thanks for explaining

the_common_man 9y ago

isso hasn't seen releases in a while https://github.com/posativ/isso/releases https://github.com/posativ/isso/releases

zaarn 9y ago

I can recommend Isso, it's rather easy to install and use. It also seems like the project is working on a moderation UI, I'm waiting on that.