4 ms·

Carnival: An unobtrusive, developer-friendly way to add comments to any site

37 points by doppp 12y ago

spookylukey 12y ago
From the plans page: Business plan, 100 comments per month, $49 per month. That seems ridiculously expensive to me - ¢49 per comment! Is this a typo for "100k comments per month" perhaps?
- marak830 12y ago
  I hope your correct, on that being a typo!
matt_morgan 12y ago
Looks really good. Some questions: 1. It looks like google or github login is required. Any plans for anonymous comments? Or maintaining local user accounts, or connections to existing login systems? 2. There is no moderation. Any plans for editorial review options? Thanks.
- patbrisbin 12y ago
  Hi, From the announcement: > We’ve got all sorts of ideas for making Carnival even better, but the most important features are the ones users want – so please, sign up, try it out, and let us know what you’re looking for. These all sound like great ideas!
mikegerwitz 12y ago
What about http://hypothes.is/ http://hypothes.is/?
SchizoDuckie 12y ago
- Asks me to sign in with github or gmail before telling me what the project is about - Paying money so that people can leave comments on my site? - No screenshots or graphics showing what it looks like on landing page of https://carnivalapp.io/ https://carnivalapp.io/ - Oh, It's an app? It's just a script isn't it? - You put the whole thing on Github, yet, you ask for a monthly fee? - So, this is basically like gitter, but for any site?
- Flimm 12y ago
  I think it's more like Disqus, just with per-paragraph comments.
- rabidferret 12y ago
  > You put the whole thing on Github, yet, you ask for a monthly fee? Yes, we've been doing this a lot lately. Nothing to stop you from running your own server, we're charging for our deployment. > So, this is basically like gitter, but for any site? Medium-style comments.
rip747 12y ago
You would think they would have at least some sort of copy on site explaining deeper about what this is and the benefits of using it... i see nothing. All I can see is that this is some sort of comment thing, great. Right now, if I wanted comments on a site I would integrate Disqus.
forgotAgain 12y ago
Further information is here: https://robots.thoughtbot.com/announcing-carnival-for-your-site https://robots.thoughtbot.com/announcing-carnival-for-your-s... It seems expensive for service provided. However they've established a lot of credibility on various Github projects so this may be a first iteration of something that will be better as it matures.
MadcapJake 12y ago
This is really poorly explained and man those prices are ridiculous. A free personal site gets you only 10 comments!? There isn't even a list of features that I could compare to other commenting systems. Honestly, I've never really liked these kinds of per-paragraph/section commenting systems (I'm guessing that's what this is by the landing page) as you can't really have lengthy comments and it's cramped off to the side (possibly only this implementation is on the side, not sure)
drewda 12y ago
If you find this confusing--especially the pricing and the minimal functionality--consider that ThoughtBot is a contract shop that also happens to package up some of their client work into side products and educational materials. They probably developed this as functionality for a client. That's probably also the pattern with: "FormKeep is a form backend for your static sites. No need for iframes, JS embeds, and CSS overrides." https://formkeep.com/ https://formkeep.com/ Take the example of Pivotal Labs developing Pivotal Tracker for their in-house work and starting to sell it on the side over time.
- tel 12y ago
  I think they actually developed it to support their blog and as a chance to prototype a Haskell workflow. Spinning it up to a product is an interesting choice.
amelius 12y ago
Why doesn't my browser offer the ability to comment on any site?
harryf 12y ago
Mobile? Strikes me there's been remarkably little innovation around bringing comment and forum-like functionality to mobile. Given that typing hurts on mobile but you have easier access to other types of input (voice, camera, location, motion etc.) there's a need to reinvent the concept of comments
mmccaff 12y ago
It'd be nice if there was a demo on the site to play with. Or, at least some screenshots to see what it looks like. Maybe there is something after signing in, but I didn't want to sign in with Github or Google, and so I moved on. Edit: Oh, there is, but I didn't notice them. Those light gray caption bubbles on the homepage.
- rabidferret 12y ago
  It's also used for the comments at robots.thoughtbot.com

37 points by doppp 12y ago

From the plans page: Business plan, 100 comments per month, $49 per month. That seems ridiculously expensive to me - ¢49 per comment! Is this a typo for "100k comments per month" perhaps?

marak830 12y ago
I hope your correct, on that being a typo!

matt_morgan 12y ago

Looks really good. Some questions: 1. It looks like google or github login is required. Any plans for anonymous comments? Or maintaining local user accounts, or connections to existing login systems? 2. There is no moderation. Any plans for editorial review options? Thanks.

patbrisbin 12y ago
Hi, From the announcement: > We’ve got all sorts of ideas for making Carnival even better, but the most important features are the ones users want – so please, sign up, try it out, and let us know what you’re looking for. These all sound like great ideas!

mikegerwitz 12y ago

What about http://hypothes.is/ http://hypothes.is/?

SchizoDuckie 12y ago

- Asks me to sign in with github or gmail before telling me what the project is about - Paying money so that people can leave comments on my site? - No screenshots or graphics showing what it looks like on landing page of https://carnivalapp.io/ https://carnivalapp.io/ - Oh, It's an app? It's just a script isn't it? - You put the whole thing on Github, yet, you ask for a monthly fee? - So, this is basically like gitter, but for any site?

Flimm 12y ago
I think it's more like Disqus, just with per-paragraph comments.
rabidferret 12y ago
> You put the whole thing on Github, yet, you ask for a monthly fee? Yes, we've been doing this a lot lately. Nothing to stop you from running your own server, we're charging for our deployment. > So, this is basically like gitter, but for any site? Medium-style comments.

rip747 12y ago

You would think they would have at least some sort of copy on site explaining deeper about what this is and the benefits of using it... i see nothing. All I can see is that this is some sort of comment thing, great. Right now, if I wanted comments on a site I would integrate Disqus.

forgotAgain 12y ago

Further information is here: https://robots.thoughtbot.com/announcing-carnival-for-your-site https://robots.thoughtbot.com/announcing-carnival-for-your-s... It seems expensive for service provided. However they've established a lot of credibility on various Github projects so this may be a first iteration of something that will be better as it matures.

MadcapJake 12y ago

This is really poorly explained and man those prices are ridiculous. A free personal site gets you only 10 comments!? There isn't even a list of features that I could compare to other commenting systems. Honestly, I've never really liked these kinds of per-paragraph/section commenting systems (I'm guessing that's what this is by the landing page) as you can't really have lengthy comments and it's cramped off to the side (possibly only this implementation is on the side, not sure)

drewda 12y ago

If you find this confusing--especially the pricing and the minimal functionality--consider that ThoughtBot is a contract shop that also happens to package up some of their client work into side products and educational materials. They probably developed this as functionality for a client. That's probably also the pattern with: "FormKeep is a form backend for your static sites. No need for iframes, JS embeds, and CSS overrides." https://formkeep.com/ https://formkeep.com/ Take the example of Pivotal Labs developing Pivotal Tracker for their in-house work and starting to sell it on the side over time.

tel 12y ago
I think they actually developed it to support their blog and as a chance to prototype a Haskell workflow. Spinning it up to a product is an interesting choice.

amelius 12y ago

Why doesn't my browser offer the ability to comment on any site?

harryf 12y ago

Mobile? Strikes me there's been remarkably little innovation around bringing comment and forum-like functionality to mobile. Given that typing hurts on mobile but you have easier access to other types of input (voice, camera, location, motion etc.) there's a need to reinvent the concept of comments

mmccaff 12y ago

It'd be nice if there was a demo on the site to play with. Or, at least some screenshots to see what it looks like. Maybe there is something after signing in, but I didn't want to sign in with Github or Google, and so I moved on. Edit: Oh, there is, but I didn't notice them. Those light gray caption bubbles on the homepage.

rabidferret 12y ago
It's also used for the comments at robots.thoughtbot.com