Tim Bray rolled his own blog years ago and has continued to, last I knew, manage the comments himself. http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/ http://www.tbray.org/ongoi

Tim Bray rolled his own blog years ago and has continued to, last I knew, manage the comments himself. http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/ http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/ It may not be what your after. And it may/will not be specific technology. But as an example of method, for someone who's reasonably well known and gets some decent traffic, it might be of interest. Aside from or in conjunction with this, I'd lean towards plain text and no linkification. Those who are going to communicate well, will do just fine with this. And competent people know how to copy/paste or drag a link when there's an interest. (Although, I suppose, "mobile"... ah, well.) P.S. Rereading your post, I better notice "HTML5" and things that lead me to believe you may be after a more dynamic interaction. Nonetheless, I've been increasingly of the opinion that "less is more" when it comes to commenting infrastructure particularly with respect to e.g. formatting and "fancy features". HN is kind of an example of this. A minimal "Markdown-ish" set of formatting features, and basic linkification; beyond that, it's up to the comment author to make things work. And identity is more by established reputation than by a specific, on-site mechanism.