Utterances – a lightweight comments widget built on GitHub issues | Hacker News Reader

Utterances – a lightweight comments widget built on GitHub issues

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113 pointsjdorfman32 comments

Giscus is an other Github based comment system using Github discussion [0] which I use for my blog [1]. It has reply, and recreation feature. And its theme is better than Utterances, in my opinion. Give it a try.

[0] https://giscus.app/

[1] https://imblien.com/posts/harry-potter-related/happy-christm...

This is cool, but I do find it odd that GitLab and Gitea isn't supported. It's always strange to me seeing people choose to build their platforms dependent on proprietary 3rd party infrastructure when good open-source self-hosted alternatives are available and easy to set up.

Maybe I’m alone with this but when I’m on GitHub, for some reason it feels more like I’m part of a community. For some reason gitlab doesn’t convey that when I write an issue there. Maybe it’s due to the packages that are on GitHub and gitlab themselves. That’s why I prefer GitHub over gitlab, although everything we do in my team we do on gitlab.

Hey there,

I'm on the Community Relations team at GitLab. I'd love to learn more about your experience as a member of the GitLab community.

When you say that opening an issue on GitLab doesn't make you feel part of a community, are you referring issues on one of GitLab's projects (ex: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab) or are you referring to issues on open source projects being hosted on GitLab.com?

Community is very important to us so when there are areas for improvement that feedback is really valued.

I think he meant just the network effects of a social platform. Github has more people in them so there are more people interacting with repositories hosted on Github.

I wish that somehow people carried identity across Github / Gitlab / Gitea / other services. Like, a federated issue tracker. Or otherwise that the issues themselves were easily movable between platforms, with no lock-in. But the incumbent platforms rarely want something like this.

An alternative is to eschew platform issues entirely, and use decentralized issue comments hosted as Git repositories, like https://github.com/dspinellis/git-issue or https://github.com/neithernut/git-dit or https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug - I think that Gitlab should offer integration with one of them. I mean: both allowing to export issues and PRs into a Git branch, and allowing people to comment on issues and PRs by pushing to a Git branch.

> wish that somehow people carried identity across Github / Gitlab / Gitea / other services. Like, a federated issue tracker. Or otherwise that the issues themselves were easily movable between platforms, with no lock-in. But the incumbent platforms rarely want something like this.

This is exactly what FedeProxy is dedicated to.

https://fedeproxy.eu

I haven't seen the projects you shared. I'll take a look. Thanks.

Note that https://fedeproxy.eu is a kind of reverse proxy to cope with forges that do not want to (or don't have yet the ability to) federate issues.

Hey John, I'm sorry for answering this late. I haven't figured out a way to get notified about replies to my comments so here I am, backtracking what I have commented within the last few days. Sorry!

I'm referring to issues on open source projects hosted on GitLab.com so I think what this is about is out of your scope in some way? Also I've noticed that my initial comment is probably biased heavily by the projects I tend to follow on GitHub and GitLab. Gigantic projects (e.g. Inkscape vs. PyTorch) aren't different for me due to the active communities and after a second thought I have to admit that a lot of projects I follow and software I work with (PyTorch, Tensorflow as well as smaller ones like Potree, pyAIS, MIDI2LR) seem to live on GitHub. That's how some projects I did end up being on GitHub as well. On the other side me and my working group believe in Open Source so larger projects tend to end up on GitLab.

I'm not even sure if it helps but I didn't want to leave it "unanswered".

It would be awesome to see Gitea support as well. Generally speaking targeting other forges than Github is a niche to be filled for many (dev)tools.

It's not odd, it's just not where their interests lay. Your priorities will always be distinct from others, and that'll seem strange from time to time, but it's a classic human condition thing.

I use this on my blog. (If anyone cares to see an example in the wild: https://lambdaland.org/posts/2021-11-09_programs_and_intent/)

It’s been easy to set up and maintain. Not that I get many comments!

Having been looking for a way to add comments to a static site for a while now, this is very cool and should get more love. Thanks for the service and the post!

I've been gathering[1] (blog) commenting systems (and some alternative approaches) since 2018. It started with a few entries, but I add new tools every few months. Great to see the ecosystem getting bigger.

[1] https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/

Great list. Maybe you might mention some more 'problems' with Disqus, since it is at the top of the 3rd-party providers section.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26033052

Github is a great platform for building apps that use its infrastructure, but not always for its intended purpose, this being a great example.

I've personally built a number of apps on top of Github Gist. One of my apps is a bookmark sharing application, the idea is you create a bookmark collection and share it with others, all seperate from your browsers bookmarks. I ended up using Github Gist and got the ability to share bookmark collections right out of the box with GistID's.

I built an app for bookmarks but you can really apply it to anything where you need to keep small amounts of data and that data doesn't need to be private (gist has a "Private" mode but it's similar to unlisted Youtube videos).

Is it GitHub terms compatible?

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25570268 " Adding comments to a static blog with Mastodon"

Using the platforms people already use to discuss to host your comments is a great idea!

I use this for my blog. To my knowledge, this is the only non scummy and free comment system

Look into Cactus comments! https://cactus.chat/

Not affiliated. Just think it's cool.

What's not to like about a service like Disqus? /s

Actually, does anyone mind answering this question (non-sarcastically)? I'd be pretty interested in the answer.

Sure. The gist is that Disqus collects your data like no one's business, and other shady things like ads. It's a very popular commenting system because it's free to use and easy to setup, but there's an obvious downside. I would go more in depth but honestly the articles below do a much better job.

https://supunkavinda.blog/disqus

https://jacquesmattheij.com/disqus-bait-and-switch-now-with-...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

See also "Disqus, a dark commenting system" at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26033052

if your content is in github then there is a benefit to having content and comments in the same place.

Otherwise it's still a good thing to have your comments in a repo because it'll live forefer and can be replicated anywhere.

I am looking for something like this, but I’m the format of the intercom.io chat widget, so we can take issues directly about our mvp sites and respond through gh issues.

So far, looks like I’ll need to make it custom, unless someone knows of an existing tool.

"Wow, you can do really cool things if you violate terms of service" is the https://xkcd.com/1494/ of the web

I use https://fastpages.fast.ai/ for my blogging platform, so I use Utterances through that... It's a great system IMO

There’s also giscus, which is inspired by Utterances and built on GitHub Discussions: https://giscus.app/

Will definitely try it out! Love having comment systems for my blog but usually a pain to set up, this seems like a clever solution.

This is amazing!! I hope GH supports this functionality forever

Can confirm it is good. Have been using it for my blog.

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