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You can't make a blog-software without comments. Well, you can try, but it wouldn't be a blog anymore. Letting the most important thing blogs achieve, enabling

by onli 14y ago

You can't make a blog-software without comments. Well, you can try, but it wouldn't be a blog anymore. Letting the most important thing blogs achieve, enabling user-comments, get in the hand of proprietary external companies is totally absurd and a huge loss. That being said, I like the idea of a focussed blogging software. Probably because I sometimes contribute to one: Serendipity (http://www.s9y.org http://www.s9y.org). And there are so many different blogengines ones out there, including Wordpress-forks, and of course some of them focus on being a blog-software instead of a cms. Heck, like so many even I wrote a blog-software for myself, based on Sinatra, cached and with spamfilter and using browserid, which is already probably quite useable (https://github.com/onli/dsnblog https://github.com/onli/dsnblog, though the description paints the image of something more, till now it is only an almost complete blog).

dorkrawk 14y ago
I agree, the lack of comments stuck out like a sore thumb in an otherwise interesting proposal. There's no reason to take out the existing comment system from WP. It works! The option to disable comments or easily use something like Disqus seems like a fine idea but if you're hosting your own blog, there's a chance you'll want to host your own comments, too.
tripzilch 14y ago
Exactly. Comments were the thing that separated blogs from "well-updated homepage" in the first place. While I can see the author's point that WordPress somewhat lost its roots as a blogging platform, if you get rid of commenting, you're also losing those roots, in a different way. For me, Disqus is not really an option. It feels bloated and loads slow, and I've lost comments to its system many times, often because only after I typed the whole comment it let me know I needed to sign up, and sometimes that didn't work (I don't have Facebook, don't want to sign up with GMail or Twitter, maybe you get a throwaway email if you ask nicely). And then, something goes wrong during the signup procedure, and because the whole thing is made out of dynamic Javascript my post has disappeared and does no longer exist in my browser history forms either.
dkuntz2 14y ago
What do you mean you can't make a blog without comments? Definitionally a blog is a web log, or an online journal. There is no requirement that a blog have comments. Dustin Curtis' Svbtle is a recent blogging platform without comments, Jekyll and its brethren of blog-aware static-site generators are also without comments (unless the publisher adds them using an external service). Nobody needs comments, and there are many good reasons not to have comments on a blog, ranging from the fact that it removes the ability for people to impulsively write a negative comment for no reason other than to be negative to reducing server and database load.
- onli 14y ago
  If I think of the platonian ideal of a blog, it has comments. And Trackback or Pingbacks. A "blog" without them is just a website someone normally updates regularily. Of course, that can have its merits, but it's not a normal blog. And btw, I "need" comments in my blog. I like them, they add value to the articles and if an article results in a good discussion, to write him was instantly more worth it. How can you for yourself come to the conclusion that no one needs them?
  - dkuntz2 14y ago
    A "normal blog"? That requires that one define normal, with a set of metrics, it also requires a set of websites to be analyzed. Should that set be all blogs hosted with WordPress or Blogger than yes, normal becomes having comments, because that's the default option. But, if you use a different set, say a group of people who use Jekyll or another static site generator, than normal turns into no comments. Do we include all sites that consider themselves to be a blog inside of this set? Should there be a number of readers over time and a number of posts over time requirement? Should the content being delivered be of a certain category? You can't say that a "normal" blog has comments without defining those, you can't even define "normal" without defining the set. ---- Definitionally, a blog does not require a commenting system. I said it before, and you seem to be refuting that. [Wikipedia says that](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog) > Although not a requirement [...] blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments Yes, I took out the "most good quality" part, because it shows a bias. Princeton WordNet defines a blog as "a shared on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies", making no reference to comments at all. The Wiktionary also has no references to comments. [WordPress' Codex](http://codex.wordpress.org/Glossary#Blog http://codex.wordpress.org/Glossary#Blog) likewise makes no reference to comments inside of it's blog definition. Same with [Blogger](https://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g https://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g). There are many people called bloggers who's sites don't have comments, Gruber's Daring Fireball, Marco Arment's blog for a few. ---- You just proved my point about nobody needing comments. You use the term need, but imply want. Your blog has no commenting requisite, you just enjoy having them. Functionally it would have very few differences if it didn't have comments. And, I never said nobody wants comments. There are many instances where people may have a site built like a blog where comments are meant to be a discussion board of sorts where some BBS for forum software would suit them better. There's no commenting requirement for a blog to be a blog. Some people may enjoy discussion inside of a comments section of a blog, and some people may operate their website in a manner dependent on a comments section, but I would argue that in such cases they're the ones who aren't operating a "normal blog", and are instead operating a discussion forum of sorts. Likewise, trackbacks, pingbacks, and refbacks are not required for a blog either. None of those are official "web features" as specified by the W3C or the WHATWG the two organizations considered to be the "keepers of web standards". And it requires additional work by the publisher as it isn't something that can be implemented by generic server software (note the generic part, server software created specifically for serving a specific piece of software could very easily implement them). Plus, comments and all of the *backs require some form of a database to run, even if it isn't your own database. Are you saying that a database is also a requisite for a site being considered a blog?

by onli 14y ago

dorkrawk 14y ago

I agree, the lack of comments stuck out like a sore thumb in an otherwise interesting proposal. There's no reason to take out the existing comment system from WP. It works! The option to disable comments or easily use something like Disqus seems like a fine idea but if you're hosting your own blog, there's a chance you'll want to host your own comments, too.

tripzilch 14y ago

Exactly. Comments were the thing that separated blogs from "well-updated homepage" in the first place. While I can see the author's point that WordPress somewhat lost its roots as a blogging platform, if you get rid of commenting, you're also losing those roots, in a different way. For me, Disqus is not really an option. It feels bloated and loads slow, and I've lost comments to its system many times, often because only after I typed the whole comment it let me know I needed to sign up, and sometimes that didn't work (I don't have Facebook, don't want to sign up with GMail or Twitter, maybe you get a throwaway email if you ask nicely). And then, something goes wrong during the signup procedure, and because the whole thing is made out of dynamic Javascript my post has disappeared and does no longer exist in my browser history forms either.

dkuntz2 14y ago

What do you mean you can't make a blog without comments? Definitionally a blog is a web log, or an online journal. There is no requirement that a blog have comments. Dustin Curtis' Svbtle is a recent blogging platform without comments, Jekyll and its brethren of blog-aware static-site generators are also without comments (unless the publisher adds them using an external service). Nobody needs comments, and there are many good reasons not to have comments on a blog, ranging from the fact that it removes the ability for people to impulsively write a negative comment for no reason other than to be negative to reducing server and database load.

onli 14y ago
If I think of the platonian ideal of a blog, it has comments. And Trackback or Pingbacks. A "blog" without them is just a website someone normally updates regularily. Of course, that can have its merits, but it's not a normal blog. And btw, I "need" comments in my blog. I like them, they add value to the articles and if an article results in a good discussion, to write him was instantly more worth it. How can you for yourself come to the conclusion that no one needs them?
- dkuntz2 14y ago
  A "normal blog"? That requires that one define normal, with a set of metrics, it also requires a set of websites to be analyzed. Should that set be all blogs hosted with WordPress or Blogger than yes, normal becomes having comments, because that's the default option. But, if you use a different set, say a group of people who use Jekyll or another static site generator, than normal turns into no comments. Do we include all sites that consider themselves to be a blog inside of this set? Should there be a number of readers over time and a number of posts over time requirement? Should the content being delivered be of a certain category? You can't say that a "normal" blog has comments without defining those, you can't even define "normal" without defining the set. ---- Definitionally, a blog does not require a commenting system. I said it before, and you seem to be refuting that. [Wikipedia says that](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog) > Although not a requirement [...] blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments Yes, I took out the "most good quality" part, because it shows a bias. Princeton WordNet defines a blog as "a shared on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies", making no reference to comments at all. The Wiktionary also has no references to comments. [WordPress' Codex](http://codex.wordpress.org/Glossary#Blog http://codex.wordpress.org/Glossary#Blog) likewise makes no reference to comments inside of it's blog definition. Same with [Blogger](https://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g https://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g). There are many people called bloggers who's sites don't have comments, Gruber's Daring Fireball, Marco Arment's blog for a few. ---- You just proved my point about nobody needing comments. You use the term need, but imply want. Your blog has no commenting requisite, you just enjoy having them. Functionally it would have very few differences if it didn't have comments. And, I never said nobody wants comments. There are many instances where people may have a site built like a blog where comments are meant to be a discussion board of sorts where some BBS for forum software would suit them better. There's no commenting requirement for a blog to be a blog. Some people may enjoy discussion inside of a comments section of a blog, and some people may operate their website in a manner dependent on a comments section, but I would argue that in such cases they're the ones who aren't operating a "normal blog", and are instead operating a discussion forum of sorts. Likewise, trackbacks, pingbacks, and refbacks are not required for a blog either. None of those are official "web features" as specified by the W3C or the WHATWG the two organizations considered to be the "keepers of web standards". And it requires additional work by the publisher as it isn't something that can be implemented by generic server software (note the generic part, server software created specifically for serving a specific piece of software could very easily implement them). Plus, comments and all of the *backs require some form of a database to run, even if it isn't your own database. Are you saying that a database is also a requisite for a site being considered a blog?