I've skimmed briefly thru the ECHO website. It's obviously designed for blogs with more traffic than mine, but it may work out well with yours.
I definitely think you should try it out. After all, a dollar a month is dirt cheap.
And if it doesn't work for you, I'll know not to try it.
My only concern is, if it does NOT work, how difficult is it to switch back to Haloscan?
So ... do, please install Echo. Be a beta-tester, or gamma-tester, or whatever. We all love it when someone else challenges the new frontier -- and takes the arrow for the rest of us.
I don't see a need for comment threading. In fact, it can be down-right difficult to find new comments with such a system.
But there are four problems I do see with HaloScan:
1 - Reliability. Need I say more?
2 - Broken blockquotes. All it would take is a simple change to the CSS file, but it hasn't happened For. Years!
3 - Searching. Gotta have it, especially when Marky says something stupid which has already been addressed.
4 - Link Limits. Three active links is just too limiting when you're trying to write a comment that uses a lot of research. While I found that HaloScan will automatically turn a raw address into an active link, and that you can have more than three of those links in a comment, it's just not as good as being able to use as many proper (a reasonable number, anyway) anchor tags as needed.
If Echo solves these problems and can be used without threading, or at least has an easy way to find new comments, then I say go for it.
P.S., It would also be nice if the storage of the default name didn't choke on double-quotes. (Every time I go to comment, I have to put everything after "Ed" back into the name field.)
I don't comment much, so I don't care one way or another. The question to ask yourself though is this:
Assume that you chose to implement the new comment tool, and assume that it turns out to be a complete and total disaster. What would it take to revert back to your old system? Would you lose monetarily? How about the ability to retain your existing comments? Would they be trashed during the conversion?
If you can unroll the change easily in the event of trouble, then sure - go for it. But only after you have a good backup in place!
Threaded comments tend to become self-isolating individual blog-posts within the larger comment thread, both stealing thunder from the original post, and often rendering following a cogent conversation in general comments unreadable in chronological terms.
The only thing I'd like to see in a comment system is that replies are emailed rather than just links to the comment thread. It makes it easier to follow the comments.
Other than that? I see nothing terribly wrong with the comment system you already have.
The biggest problem I have with your current setup is that I can't middle click to have the comments open up in a new Firefox tab; I have to left click to open up a new window. It's a bit annoying, as I don't like to have a lot of windows opened up at once.
Threading can be both good and bad. I've seen it get so completely out of hand on high-traffic blogs that it makes it impossible to follow a conversation, particularly when everyone is replying to a low-value comment. On the other hand, it works well in low-traffic blogs where the use of threading is minimal.
I read much more than I ever comment, but the only once I've ever had trouble with on anyone's site is wordpress comments. Give it a try if you want. But we'd appreciate feedback if it's not what you expected.
Echo seems pretty interested in merging commenting with social media-esque systems...which is perhaps not bad, but we must wonder to whom the benefit of such an arrangement accrues. Site owner? Commenting community? Comment vendor? Entities that own the system of identity and tech unification of a community obtain and leverage significant value from their users, and especially from site hosts who bring them users. Is the value exchange fair, or unbalanced? {shrugs}
Jury's out for me on threaded comments. I can see long threads branching in terms of their sub topics and digressions. There's more than a touch of forumlike feature in that, which I think fits...honestly, the form of comments as we know them today is very much the inertia of the design of early, crappy implementations.
So, as to what commenters here value, it seems like it is:
* The ability to express structured discourse, with lots of citation like links.
* The ability to link to points within comments, when calling out the assertions of others
* The ability to block quote the quotes of others
* The ability to search not only the thread, but the aggregated threads of this site.
It's not clear to me whether echo serves those ends much better than the incumbent or not, but it seems like it *might* be worth a trial run on a few posts.
I don't know about Echo, but Haloscan bites the big one, especially for sites where big discussions get going.
The biggest problem with Haloscan is it's a "disjointed" system - the comments aren't tied to the post.
What post does: http://www.haloscan.com/comments/khbaker/7455472563871117966/
Go with? I can figure it out programmaticallym but not via any system that should be there.
Add to that that after a while, Haloscan reports "0 Comments" - despite how many are actually there. (This is why Google misses a *lot* of the comments in the archives - it's not searching them, since it's "seen" that there aren't any to go index. Some of the 100+ comment threads are hidden behind the "0 Comments".
To me, that's the biggest sin - now you can't search comments. (I noticed this looking for a couple of threads where I knew something was said - I remembered the post, found it in archives, and it said no comments - clicking on it though revealed a lot of them.)
Keeping the info in the comments is relatively simple. I can do it in (not that long).. and Robb probably could do it inside of that, and go to lunch and come back.
What IS comment threading - what's it LOOK like? If it ends up looking at all like this, you can forget me ever returning, seriously. I once tried to hold a discussion with that guy and wound up in Total Wonderland.
Also, I went back from HoloScan to Blogger commenting because I was getting too much SPAM off Haloscan including SPAM-backtracks - I get Zip Nada at Blogspot.
In comment threading, you can respond to a specific comment, and your reply will appear below that specific comment, slightly indented. Subsequent responses to that original comment will appear below yours. Responses to YOUR response will appear, again slightly indented, below YOUR comment. It's pretty apparent when a sub-discussion is taking place, and you don't have to read through every comment to follow the discussion like you do now.
Kevin:
"In comment threading, you can respond to a specific comment, and your reply will appear below that specific comment, slightly indented. Subsequent responses to that original comment will appear below yours. Responses to YOUR response will appear, again slightly indented, below YOUR comment."
My God, man! That will make The Smallest Minority look like Democratic Fucking Underground!
The Horror....The Horror!
One of the charms of clunky old Haloscan, especially on a blog like this one, is it does rather enforce people remaining on point.
With your commentariat, I don't think that will be much of a problem, except your bestest chum Markadelphia will be dragging his "Opprobrium Tail" through your comment section like Godzilla through Tokyo, but I guess that comes with the territory.
Seing as how you're being shoehorned into it, I'm sure we'll all adapt.
But I heartily endorse shooting at dawn the first varlet who uses:
1. Any links to existing comments will probably be broken.
2. Threads will probably not be good on this blog. If you can turn them off, do so.
Good points(?):
1. Hopefully the new system will be clever enough to actually link back to the posts. (Then I can stop putting the "comment on" links in my comments ;-) )
BTW Kevin -- If you ever have a mind to move your blog to WordPress, I'd be happy to help you out.
Magus, I finally took the time to look at it, too. (I bin bizzy.)
Blech.
Complaints are, in the order they occur to me as I look at a sample site:
1) Light gray text on a white background? Why not use invisible ink?
2) Little pictures of all the commenters? In engineering terms, it's called "chart junk". It is decoration that serves no purpose but has a cost; it eats up space, memory, and bandwidth. I'm not ten years old; I don't need cute and I'm not cute.
3) I see a handful of comments, then a "More" button. I hit "More" and a few more comments appear. I hit "More" and a few more comments appear. I hit "More" and a few more comments appear. And so on ... How about showing them all, or at least adding a "show all" button? Goddamn, but that's annoying.
4) I don't see a "Preview" button. If it were my blog, this would be a killer.
Actually, avatars are useful for following conversations and keeping track of who said what. It's just a visual cue as to who said what (and humans are very visual creatures).
A good system will take those commenters who don't have avatars and make an image from their IP address. Looks like a geometric shape of varying colors.
"'Actually, avatars are useful for following conversations and keeping track of who said what.'
'That's what names are for.'"
Well, yeah, but if you haven't noticed, people are visual creatures. If I'm trying to find a particular commenter in a long comment thread, it's a lot faster to skim for an image than read all the names.
Or are you arguing that avatars actually harm the situation somehow?
Hopefully you can (and will) turn some of that off.
Threading is useful - sometimes, but it's almost never implemented properly. The linear comments works better, is easier to read, and to find what you're looking for.
Avatars? More fluff and things to hold up loading the page.
Plus they take up valuable real estate.
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2009/10/ok-what-do-you-want.html (34 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
I'd rather you fight than switch.
Regards,
Tarey Tahn
I find comment threading to be a feature in search of a need. Your mileage may vary.
My only complaint about Haloscan has been reliability. It's feature set is fine with me.
That's two against . . .
Assuming its old-comment-import is bulletproof, I would not be oppposed... if only to fix your blockquotes ;).
I've skimmed briefly thru the ECHO website. It's obviously designed for blogs with more traffic than mine, but it may work out well with yours.
I definitely think you should try it out. After all, a dollar a month is dirt cheap.
And if it doesn't work for you, I'll know not to try it.
My only concern is, if it does NOT work, how difficult is it to switch back to Haloscan?
So ... do, please install Echo. Be a beta-tester, or gamma-tester, or whatever. We all love it when someone else challenges the new frontier -- and takes the arrow for the rest of us.
I've had no problems commenting with Haloscan.
I don't see a need for comment threading. In fact, it can be down-right difficult to find new comments with such a system.
But there are four problems I do see with HaloScan:
1 - Reliability. Need I say more?
2 - Broken blockquotes. All it would take is a simple change to the CSS file, but it hasn't happened For. Years!
3 - Searching. Gotta have it, especially when Marky says something stupid which has already been addressed.
4 - Link Limits. Three active links is just too limiting when you're trying to write a comment that uses a lot of research. While I found that HaloScan will automatically turn a raw address into an active link, and that you can have more than three of those links in a comment, it's just not as good as being able to use as many proper (a reasonable number, anyway) anchor tags as needed.
If Echo solves these problems and can be used without threading, or at least has an easy way to find new comments, then I say go for it.
P.S., It would also be nice if the storage of the default name didn't choke on double-quotes. (Every time I go to comment, I have to put everything after "Ed" back into the name field.)
I don't comment much, so I don't care one way or another. The question to ask yourself though is this:
Assume that you chose to implement the new comment tool, and assume that it turns out to be a complete and total disaster. What would it take to revert back to your old system? Would you lose monetarily? How about the ability to retain your existing comments? Would they be trashed during the conversion?
If you can unroll the change easily in the event of trouble, then sure - go for it. But only after you have a good backup in place!
Threads are for forums.
Comments are comments.
Threaded comments tend to become self-isolating individual blog-posts within the larger comment thread, both stealing thunder from the original post, and often rendering following a cogent conversation in general comments unreadable in chronological terms.
My take?
Doom on threaded comments.
Doom.
Doom!
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
I like it fine the way it is - why fix something that isn't broke? - but hey, it's your blog. I'll comment either way, just as infrequently :)
The only thing I'd like to see in a comment system is that replies are emailed rather than just links to the comment thread. It makes it easier to follow the comments.
Other than that? I see nothing terribly wrong with the comment system you already have.
Count another vote for keeping it the way it is. Running around changing things just because we can....well, it's rather lefty.
The biggest problem I have with your current setup is that I can't middle click to have the comments open up in a new Firefox tab; I have to left click to open up a new window. It's a bit annoying, as I don't like to have a lot of windows opened up at once.
Threading can be both good and bad. I've seen it get so completely out of hand on high-traffic blogs that it makes it impossible to follow a conversation, particularly when everyone is replying to a low-value comment. On the other hand, it works well in low-traffic blogs where the use of threading is minimal.
I read much more than I ever comment, but the only once I've ever had trouble with on anyone's site is wordpress comments. Give it a try if you want. But we'd appreciate feedback if it's not what you expected.
Echo seems pretty interested in merging commenting with social media-esque systems...which is perhaps not bad, but we must wonder to whom the benefit of such an arrangement accrues. Site owner? Commenting community? Comment vendor? Entities that own the system of identity and tech unification of a community obtain and leverage significant value from their users, and especially from site hosts who bring them users. Is the value exchange fair, or unbalanced? {shrugs}
Jury's out for me on threaded comments. I can see long threads branching in terms of their sub topics and digressions. There's more than a touch of forumlike feature in that, which I think fits...honestly, the form of comments as we know them today is very much the inertia of the design of early, crappy implementations.
So, as to what commenters here value, it seems like it is:
* The ability to express structured discourse, with lots of citation like links.
* The ability to link to points within comments, when calling out the assertions of others
* The ability to block quote the quotes of others
* The ability to search not only the thread, but the aggregated threads of this site.
It's not clear to me whether echo serves those ends much better than the incumbent or not, but it seems like it *might* be worth a trial run on a few posts.
I don't know about Echo, but Haloscan bites the big one, especially for sites where big discussions get going.
The biggest problem with Haloscan is it's a "disjointed" system - the comments aren't tied to the post.
What post does: http://www.haloscan.com/comments/khbaker/7455472563871117966/
Go with? I can figure it out programmaticallym but not via any system that should be there.
Add to that that after a while, Haloscan reports "0 Comments" - despite how many are actually there. (This is why Google misses a *lot* of the comments in the archives - it's not searching them, since it's "seen" that there aren't any to go index. Some of the 100+ comment threads are hidden behind the "0 Comments".
To me, that's the biggest sin - now you can't search comments. (I noticed this looking for a couple of threads where I knew something was said - I remembered the post, found it in archives, and it said no comments - clicking on it though revealed a lot of them.)
Keeping the info in the comments is relatively simple. I can do it in (not that long).. and Robb probably could do it inside of that, and go to lunch and come back.
"Searching. Gotta have it, especially when Marky says something stupid which has already been addressed."
Oops.
Yes, good search tools would be very nice.
"Link Limits."
Oops.
Yes, link limits should be vastly increased.
What IS comment threading - what's it LOOK like? If it ends up looking at all like this, you can forget me ever returning, seriously. I once tried to hold a discussion with that guy and wound up in Total Wonderland.
Also, I went back from HoloScan to Blogger commenting because I was getting too much SPAM off Haloscan including SPAM-backtracks - I get Zip Nada at Blogspot.
DirtCrashr:
In comment threading, you can respond to a specific comment, and your reply will appear below that specific comment, slightly indented. Subsequent responses to that original comment will appear below yours. Responses to YOUR response will appear, again slightly indented, below YOUR comment. It's pretty apparent when a sub-discussion is taking place, and you don't have to read through every comment to follow the discussion like you do now.
So long as U-J is happy...
:D
Ok I get that. Like Usenet. It will be an interesting challenge for your Marx-bot to keep-up because it drives everything Left to Right!
Kevin:
"In comment threading, you can respond to a specific comment, and your reply will appear below that specific comment, slightly indented. Subsequent responses to that original comment will appear below yours. Responses to YOUR response will appear, again slightly indented, below YOUR comment."
My God, man! That will make The Smallest Minority look like Democratic Fucking Underground!
The Horror....The Horror!
One of the charms of clunky old Haloscan, especially on a blog like this one, is it does rather enforce people remaining on point.
With your commentariat, I don't think that will be much of a problem, except your bestest chum Markadelphia will be dragging his "Opprobrium Tail" through your comment section like Godzilla through Tokyo, but I guess that comes with the territory.
Seing as how you're being shoehorned into it, I'm sure we'll all adapt.
But I heartily endorse shooting at dawn the first varlet who uses:
"+1" and/or "Bump".
My two Pelosi's worth of opinyun on the matter.
Hmmm ...
Think of all the broken links in the imported comments, those that now point to comments in Haloscan.
Bummer ...
Comment for: http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2009/10/ok-what-do-you-want.html
Bad points:
1. Any links to existing comments will probably be broken.
2. Threads will probably not be good on this blog. If you can turn them off, do so.
Good points(?):
1. Hopefully the new system will be clever enough to actually link back to the posts. (Then I can stop putting the "comment on" links in my comments ;-) )
BTW Kevin -- If you ever have a mind to move your blog to WordPress, I'd be happy to help you out.
Checked it out at the link provided. It looks like mangy dog ass -- overall I'd rate Echo as "meh".
I don't believe commenting to a blog post is "Social Networking" which is what Echo bills itself as a tool for.
Magus, I finally took the time to look at it, too. (I bin bizzy.)
Blech.
Complaints are, in the order they occur to me as I look at a sample site:
1) Light gray text on a white background? Why not use invisible ink?
2) Little pictures of all the commenters? In engineering terms, it's called "chart junk". It is decoration that serves no purpose but has a cost; it eats up space, memory, and bandwidth. I'm not ten years old; I don't need cute and I'm not cute.
3) I see a handful of comments, then a "More" button. I hit "More" and a few more comments appear. I hit "More" and a few more comments appear. I hit "More" and a few more comments appear. And so on ... How about showing them all, or at least adding a "show all" button? Goddamn, but that's annoying.
4) I don't see a "Preview" button. If it were my blog, this would be a killer.
I am not impressed yet.
"Little pictures of all the commenters?"
Actually, avatars are useful for following conversations and keeping track of who said what. It's just a visual cue as to who said what (and humans are very visual creatures).
A good system will take those commenters who don't have avatars and make an image from their IP address. Looks like a geometric shape of varying colors.
Death to "Bump"! Banishment to the outer islands for "+1".
"Actually, avatars are useful for following conversations and keeping track of who said what."
That's what names are for.
Is Echo something like what Marko Kloos uses at his place?
Not that I can tell.
"'Actually, avatars are useful for following conversations and keeping track of who said what.'
'That's what names are for.'"
Well, yeah, but if you haven't noticed, people are visual creatures. If I'm trying to find a particular commenter in a long comment thread, it's a lot faster to skim for an image than read all the names.
Or are you arguing that avatars actually harm the situation somehow?
"Or are you arguing that avatars actually harm the situation somehow?"
No, not at all. I find reading names easy, and so skimming names to find and/or avoid works quite well.
Gah.
Hopefully you can (and will) turn some of that off.
Threading is useful - sometimes, but it's almost never implemented properly. The linear comments works better, is easier to read, and to find what you're looking for.
Avatars? More fluff and things to hold up loading the page.
Plus they take up valuable real estate.
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>