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Comment by sago | Hacker News Reader

RSS is awesome. Bring on its resurgence.

But.

It is fundamentally not fit as a Facebook or social media replacement because of it's lack of simple commenting support. It suits some curmudgeonly old farts like me, perhaps. But even I want to feedback sometimes or join in the discussion (hence this comment).

Are there solutions that a content creator can provide, via RSS, without requiring its readers to install particular jiggery pokery? Or is the only option HN / reddit style commenting sites, separate from the content?

View on HN

There is ActivityPub:

https://activitypub.rocks/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16222478

https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/

https://github.com/w3c/activitypub

But not enough implementations of it yet that tie into blog content.

I very much look forward to the day when ActivityPub becomes more pervasive in platforms...beyond websites/apps that interact directly with other sites/apps and other use-cases, ActivityPub should be a boon to comment systems. (I myself am in favor of decentralized comment systems...then again I'm biased IN FAVOR of most any decentralized platforms/systems. ;-)

I think HN might be the only place I read the comments. Missing the hell stew of a comments section is a feature as I see it.

50% of the time I read the comments before/instead the link !!!

Agreed. I was glad when npr.org removed their Disqus comments sections. Disqus comments on news websites tend to be very nasty and stain websites more often than not IMO. Disqus comments on local news sites are an absolute cesspool.

Funny because there was a time where Disqus comments actually improved the quality of commentary.

RSS is, fundamentally, just links to web pages. Why would it need to have built-in commenting? Just go to the linked page and comment there.

We don't need it to have comments. But I think the lack of commenting is the big problem of an RSS focused ecosystem.

Shooting comments off into the ether is fine by clicking the page and commenting there. But, if you have a couple of dozen blogs in your RSS feed, and leave a handful of comments a day, clicking back through the specific place to see if you've been responded to is way too much effort. Sites like HN, Reddit, and Facebook, have a central mechanism by which you can be notified.

In the '10s I had a blog with over 1000 readers, I had fewer comments, and less community than the replacement Facebook group has with a fraction of that number.

That may not be a problem for publishers who are purely interested in eyeballs. But that isn't all of them. If the aim is to free content from the walled garden (which I think is an important goal), then it matters.

Don't most blogging platforms have the option to email replies? In any case, I prefer a bit of friction in the comment process, since it discourages people from "shooting off" without thinking.

Usenet with dial-up was good for this. You'd compose your reply, then look it back up, read over, amend, perhaps delete or send later. It made for more considered responses.

I've noticed with HN it's very swarm-like and transient these days. Comment following is also difficult without some thread control. At a minimum you need collapsible threads. Too much to read, don't bother, say something that's been said already - and add to the noise. Or have a bypassed dangling leaf comment.

HN has collapsible threads nowadays (it's the [-] symbol on the post header).

Oh bloody hell, I never figured that out. Used to use some js for that.

Any decent commenting system lets you receive reply notifications. If some of them don't, the solution is to fix that, not split the userbase by constructing an entirely new, parallel comment system.

I'm not sure what you mean, sorry.

I've seen email notifications, but to me they are just as bad as subscribing to a lot of sites by email. That's kind of what RSS is for: aggregation. So yes, it means you don't have to click through sites, I accept that, but still not a good user experience. If you mean something else, let me know, I am interested.

I don't know what you mean by splitting the user base or constructing a parallel comment system. I'm just talking about how to provide commenting, as a content publisher. RSS + on-site page by page commenting (even with email notifications) has a fraction of the engagement (in my anecdotal experience) of FB.

It actually has <comments>

I love RSS, I think its much better than facebook. But having voting or a score on items would be nice.

RSS for headlines and federation of feeds, Disqus for comments.

Wouldn't that just make Disqus the new Facebook?

webmentions and microsub, please. Disqus is just another silo, it has nothing to do with RSS and federation.

Thanks for the pointer. What facility does webmention have to support moderation of comments on my articles?

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