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> Yes, finally I’ve found the time to buy a VPS and host a Jekyll blog with a nice comment system Do we really need comment section on blogs? The blog comments

> Yes, finally I’ve found the time to buy a VPS and host a Jekyll blog with a nice comment system Do we really need comment section on blogs? The blog comments are not particularly helpful to have any discussion at least not the way one can have here on HN, reddit, Twitter, etc,. Besides the poor user interface, the users have to sign up to comment. Why would they sign up when they can have discussions on above platforms? If one does not implement sign up but allow users to comment just by entering username (like the way this blog did) then people start abusing the comment section. I think HN/Reddit comment section should be used for discussions although I would prefer if it could be embedded in blog somehow. I understand that this is terrible idea if reddit/hn chose to be walled gardens someday but then do we have other better solution?

reedciccio 5y ago
ivanmontillam 5y ago
> I think HN/Reddit comment section should be used for discussions although I would prefer if it could be embedded in blog somehow. I've thought of this as well, but then I read on the HN Guidelines that: Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity. [0] So unless every post you have complies with HN Guidelines, I don't think we'll ever see this. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- theamk 5y ago
  All the rules say is you should not submit your own blog posts yourself. But if someone else submits it, you are welcome to link to it, and perhaps even embed (I think there is an API to access HN data?) I can imagine a "smart" blog which periodcally checks HN if the post has been submitted (or maybe verifiers visitors' Refere headers?) If no submission is found, the "comments" link points to HN submission page. If yes, the "comments" link points to existing discussion.
  - BeeOnRope 5y ago
    I don't think the rules actually say you should not submit your own blogs posts.
giuliomagnifico 5y ago
Yes we need it because on some posts, like a tutorial, can be useful ask to the original poster some infos. You don’t have to sign up, I disabled it, you can also make an anonymous comment. PS: if we don’t need the comments, then why you commented here? :-)
- quaintdev 5y ago
  > PS: if we don’t need the comments, then why you commented here? :-) I never said we don't need comments. We probably do not need it on blog. > You don’t have to sign up, I disabled it, you can also make an anonymous comment. As I mentioned in my comment the disadvantage of that is people abuse it.
  - giuliomagnifico 5y ago
    > I never said we don't need comments. We probably do not need it on blog. But my blog has some tutorials, people may want to ask me something, if we don't talk on a personal blog self-hosted, we have to rely on some centralized platforms/socials. There are already lots of them! >As I mentioned in my comment the disadvantage of that is people abuse it. If someone (you) write "penis" in other languages, I can delete (as I've done) it. There's a spam filter for these stupid things, but I hope people are a bit more adults than who write "penis" in Indian on someone's blog! =)
AlchemistCamp 5y ago
I couldn't disagree more. Comments have been a plus on every blog I've run. I've learned from my readers, been able to answer their questions and even become friends with a few of them. The idea that every blog comment system should be run by a multi-billion dollar company like Facebook, Reddit or YC is fundamentally at odds with the open web.
- rdtwo 5y ago
  I do wish there was a way to just transfer ids better between systems. I don’t really want to b have users create an account every time but no good way to prevent spam. Maybe h-capcha but even that is cheap to spam.
  - jagger27 5y ago
    As much as it pains me to mention it here, as I wholeheartedly do not support it for a number of important reasons, something like Metamask and an identity on a blockchain could work for this. The more obvious solution is OAuth (or OpenID Connect), and there are plenty of providers that aren't Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, or GitHub.
    - rdtwo 5y ago
      Yeah I don’t really care about I’d but the problem is spam. Maybe phone text authentication is an alternative, idk how much that costs to implement though.
      - fhackenberger 5y ago
        About 5c per msg, a bit lower for some countries, a bit higher for others.
        rdtwo 5y ago
        Is there no service out there where you can just buy a number and use it for text validation
mattarm 5y ago
HN and Reddit are already walled gardens today, in the sense that they are in no way federated with other sites, and they both reserve the right to delete content at any point. There isn't much different between a blog that links to a Facebook post asking people to "discuss this post on Facebook" than doing the same with HN or Reddit.
- theamk 5y ago
  Hard disagree. There are plenty of reasons to avoid Facebook specfically - tracking across the web, real name policy, per-user algorithmic feed, selling info, and many other things. None of them apply to HN, and I am pretty sure most of them don't apply to reddit either.
vlmutolo 5y ago
I agree that having comment sections on blogs can be problematic. Nobody wants to make an account on a random blog site just to make a comment, and you need explicit accounts to stop spam. Comment histories are also nice to have. There's an interesting middle ground in this space called Cactus Comments [0]. They're part of the Matrix ecosystem. The idea is to create a Matrix "room" for every post so that anyone with a Matrix account can comment in that room. Then, at the bottom of the post there's a preview of the most recent messages in the room, along with (optionally) a text box for anonymous comments. Admittedly, setting this up to be self-hosted is pretty involved, especially if you're not already with Matrix. But the Cactus people make it easy to get started with their (free) public servers. [0]: https://cactus.chat/demo/ https://cactus.chat/demo/
edgyquant 5y ago
I think so that way people stumbling on it etc can give feedback to the writer. I often will hit some technical blog that mostly answers my question and then someone in the comments will correct the author or even ask a question that further expands on what the blog post is about.
coffeefirst 5y ago
My favorite way to do this is to encourage people to email me their comments. If anyone has something to add to the discussion I may ask for permission to quote them in a "Responses" sections, or more often, if they write their own post I'll link to it. Why do this? Well, for one, it gives me absolutely quality control over my website. I am the final arbiter of what I want to present and how I want to present it. But this also changes the shape of the comments; it is not a public remark into the void, it is a letter to the author. I've been amazed and the quality and thoughtfulness in some of these notes.
- theamk 5y ago
  And this is why websites like HN exist, and why people use them to discover new blogs :) A lot of times I am reading something, and think: "That's a dangerous advice! Don't do this unless you really have to!" If I post this as HN comment, I will get somr responses, maybe confirming my point, or perhaphs saying that I am wrong and that original advice was good after all. And either way, future readers will be able to read whole discussion and make their own judgement. But if the author asks people to email, I will not bother. Unless my arguments are so good as to convince original author, they will just "disappear" - no one else will read them or respond to them.
rabbits77 5y ago
I agree completely. I disable all comments on my blogs and if people want to discuss then Twitter or Reddit seem to make much more sense. Otherwise you end up spending a ton of time just removing spam, never mind trying to make sense of and respond to the comments that may get randomly left years after the original post.
- JohnL4 5y ago
  Disqus not good enough? Or Kismet (WordPress)?
design-of-homes 5y ago
"Do we really need comment section on blogs?" I used to write a blog and the comments that readers posted were always a valuable part of the blog. Comments don't require sign-up depending on the settings of your blog (mine did not require sign-up). Blogs without the ability to post comments are often static site blog generators - one of the reasons why I don't use them. (I don't consider embedding Disqus a suitable option for comments - a unpleasant experience for readers.) A frequent occurrence: a blog has no commenting ability and instead the blog author encourages readers to discuss their blog entry on Twitter(?!), or Hacker News or some other discussion forum. For some authors discussion is not very important - it's more about sharing the story to as many sites as possible. I can understand that, but I hope comments remain an important part of many blogs.
peakaboo 5y ago
In all these other platforms, he is not the moderator of the comments. They can be censored or removed, and one of those corporations can decide that now you are not allowed to have that opinion anymore.
mro_name 5y ago
I dis/agree in parts - esp. when it comes to response times. I love having comments, but I have them with a delay. This way they can well loop back, say 2x a day, to a static blog. And: the comments are seperate from the article in an iframe, see e.g. https://blog.mro.name/2009/08/nsdateformatter-http-header/#comments https://blog.mro.name/2009/08/nsdateformatter-http-header/#c...

reedciccio 5y ago

ivanmontillam 5y ago

> I think HN/Reddit comment section should be used for discussions although I would prefer if it could be embedded in blog somehow. I've thought of this as well, but then I read on the HN Guidelines that: Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity. [0] So unless every post you have complies with HN Guidelines, I don't think we'll ever see this. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

theamk 5y ago
All the rules say is you should not submit your own blog posts yourself. But if someone else submits it, you are welcome to link to it, and perhaps even embed (I think there is an API to access HN data?) I can imagine a "smart" blog which periodcally checks HN if the post has been submitted (or maybe verifiers visitors' Refere headers?) If no submission is found, the "comments" link points to HN submission page. If yes, the "comments" link points to existing discussion.
- BeeOnRope 5y ago
  I don't think the rules actually say you should not submit your own blogs posts.

giuliomagnifico 5y ago

Yes we need it because on some posts, like a tutorial, can be useful ask to the original poster some infos. You don’t have to sign up, I disabled it, you can also make an anonymous comment. PS: if we don’t need the comments, then why you commented here? :-)

quaintdev 5y ago
> PS: if we don’t need the comments, then why you commented here? :-) I never said we don't need comments. We probably do not need it on blog. > You don’t have to sign up, I disabled it, you can also make an anonymous comment. As I mentioned in my comment the disadvantage of that is people abuse it.
- giuliomagnifico 5y ago
  > I never said we don't need comments. We probably do not need it on blog. But my blog has some tutorials, people may want to ask me something, if we don't talk on a personal blog self-hosted, we have to rely on some centralized platforms/socials. There are already lots of them! >As I mentioned in my comment the disadvantage of that is people abuse it. If someone (you) write "penis" in other languages, I can delete (as I've done) it. There's a spam filter for these stupid things, but I hope people are a bit more adults than who write "penis" in Indian on someone's blog! =)

AlchemistCamp 5y ago

I couldn't disagree more. Comments have been a plus on every blog I've run. I've learned from my readers, been able to answer their questions and even become friends with a few of them. The idea that every blog comment system should be run by a multi-billion dollar company like Facebook, Reddit or YC is fundamentally at odds with the open web.

rdtwo 5y ago
I do wish there was a way to just transfer ids better between systems. I don’t really want to b have users create an account every time but no good way to prevent spam. Maybe h-capcha but even that is cheap to spam.
- jagger27 5y ago
  As much as it pains me to mention it here, as I wholeheartedly do not support it for a number of important reasons, something like Metamask and an identity on a blockchain could work for this. The more obvious solution is OAuth (or OpenID Connect), and there are plenty of providers that aren't Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, or GitHub.
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    Yeah I don’t really care about I’d but the problem is spam. Maybe phone text authentication is an alternative, idk how much that costs to implement though.
    - fhackenberger 5y ago
      About 5c per msg, a bit lower for some countries, a bit higher for others.
      - rdtwo 5y ago
        Is there no service out there where you can just buy a number and use it for text validation

mattarm 5y ago

HN and Reddit are already walled gardens today, in the sense that they are in no way federated with other sites, and they both reserve the right to delete content at any point. There isn't much different between a blog that links to a Facebook post asking people to "discuss this post on Facebook" than doing the same with HN or Reddit.

theamk 5y ago
Hard disagree. There are plenty of reasons to avoid Facebook specfically - tracking across the web, real name policy, per-user algorithmic feed, selling info, and many other things. None of them apply to HN, and I am pretty sure most of them don't apply to reddit either.

vlmutolo 5y ago

I agree that having comment sections on blogs can be problematic. Nobody wants to make an account on a random blog site just to make a comment, and you need explicit accounts to stop spam. Comment histories are also nice to have. There's an interesting middle ground in this space called Cactus Comments [0]. They're part of the Matrix ecosystem. The idea is to create a Matrix "room" for every post so that anyone with a Matrix account can comment in that room. Then, at the bottom of the post there's a preview of the most recent messages in the room, along with (optionally) a text box for anonymous comments. Admittedly, setting this up to be self-hosted is pretty involved, especially if you're not already with Matrix. But the Cactus people make it easy to get started with their (free) public servers. [0]: https://cactus.chat/demo/ https://cactus.chat/demo/

edgyquant 5y ago

I think so that way people stumbling on it etc can give feedback to the writer. I often will hit some technical blog that mostly answers my question and then someone in the comments will correct the author or even ask a question that further expands on what the blog post is about.

coffeefirst 5y ago

My favorite way to do this is to encourage people to email me their comments. If anyone has something to add to the discussion I may ask for permission to quote them in a "Responses" sections, or more often, if they write their own post I'll link to it. Why do this? Well, for one, it gives me absolutely quality control over my website. I am the final arbiter of what I want to present and how I want to present it. But this also changes the shape of the comments; it is not a public remark into the void, it is a letter to the author. I've been amazed and the quality and thoughtfulness in some of these notes.

theamk 5y ago
And this is why websites like HN exist, and why people use them to discover new blogs :) A lot of times I am reading something, and think: "That's a dangerous advice! Don't do this unless you really have to!" If I post this as HN comment, I will get somr responses, maybe confirming my point, or perhaphs saying that I am wrong and that original advice was good after all. And either way, future readers will be able to read whole discussion and make their own judgement. But if the author asks people to email, I will not bother. Unless my arguments are so good as to convince original author, they will just "disappear" - no one else will read them or respond to them.

rabbits77 5y ago

I agree completely. I disable all comments on my blogs and if people want to discuss then Twitter or Reddit seem to make much more sense. Otherwise you end up spending a ton of time just removing spam, never mind trying to make sense of and respond to the comments that may get randomly left years after the original post.

JohnL4 5y ago
Disqus not good enough? Or Kismet (WordPress)?

design-of-homes 5y ago

"Do we really need comment section on blogs?" I used to write a blog and the comments that readers posted were always a valuable part of the blog. Comments don't require sign-up depending on the settings of your blog (mine did not require sign-up). Blogs without the ability to post comments are often static site blog generators - one of the reasons why I don't use them. (I don't consider embedding Disqus a suitable option for comments - a unpleasant experience for readers.) A frequent occurrence: a blog has no commenting ability and instead the blog author encourages readers to discuss their blog entry on Twitter(?!), or Hacker News or some other discussion forum. For some authors discussion is not very important - it's more about sharing the story to as many sites as possible. I can understand that, but I hope comments remain an important part of many blogs.

peakaboo 5y ago

In all these other platforms, he is not the moderator of the comments. They can be censored or removed, and one of those corporations can decide that now you are not allowed to have that opinion anymore.

mro_name 5y ago

I dis/agree in parts - esp. when it comes to response times. I love having comments, but I have them with a delay. This way they can well loop back, say 2x a day, to a static blog. And: the comments are seperate from the article in an iframe, see e.g. https://blog.mro.name/2009/08/nsdateformatter-http-header/#comments https://blog.mro.name/2009/08/nsdateformatter-http-header/#c...