Various ways to include comments on a static site (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Various ways to include comments on a static site (2018)

darekkay.com

109 pointsdarekkay47 comments

I'm more of the opinion that if you're sharing something, especially in a blog, then you should never add a comment section. People don't comment unless they have a point that they want to put across, which in 99% of the cases will be something negative. Just look at HN and (ugh) Twitter -- almost every discussion revolves around people trying to find things to complain about.

I instead share a contact e-mail. This works as a good deterrent to filter the pointless complainers, while still allowing those who truly need to contact me to have a way to do so.

EDIT: Just might need to clarify that I don't mean that HN is overwhelmingly negative, just that the comments usually revolve about nitpicking terms and concepts which would fall into the concept of something "negative".

I disagree that HN is quite so negative: I see a lot of discussions where people are productively expanding a discussion on a post.

Even when it's critical though, I still see that as highly useful if it is not done from a merely dogmatic viewpoint. Picking apart an idea or argument is very useful in understanding it. This should be done especially if a person disagrees with it because absent dissection it is virtually impossible to pinpoint not just why and what you disagree with, but also whether or not that flaw can be rectified.

I've come into conversations at times where I disagreed (or agreed) with something only to see a key component elaborated or additional evidence provided, changing my mind.

So, I see a community in HN that ruthlessly dissects ideas. Most things aren't perfect so there will always be some degree of "that's wrong". I don't think that makes HN inherently negative. Though yes, I do occasionally see comments that seem to go out of their way to find flaws peripheral to the topic at hand and inflate them, derailing more productive conversation.

> I disagree that HN is quite so negative: I see a lot of discussions where people are productively expanding a discussion on a post.

That’s why I keep coming back to HN. But even I have to admit that those valuable posts are in the minority of comments these days.

You’re right that the HN community tries to dissect everything, but a staggering number of those dissection attempts are coming from people who don’t know what they’re talking about or who didn’t bother reading the article. I’ve seen countless comment sections where the majority of comments are from angry people who clearly didn’t read the article but want to complain about what they assumed the article said.

Worse, the bad comments are often extremely confident despite being wrong. This effect is most obvious when you click on a comment section for something you know very deeply, only to see highly upvoted comments saying things that can often be disproved with 2 minutes of Googling.

The good comments can still be found, but it takes work to find them.

I think Dan Luu said it best:

> HN comments are terrible. On any topic I’m informed about, the vast majority of comments are pretty clearly wrong. Most of the time, there are zero comments from people who know anything about the topic and the top comment is reasonable sounding but totally incorrect. Additionally, many comments are gratuitously mean.

His full blog post: https://danluu.com/hn-comments/

Could it be that your site topics draw in negative folks? Some topics can evoke emotional feedback. In that case you might consider EchoChamber [1] javascript that stores comments in the browser. This is not my project.

When a user submits a comment, echochamber.js will save the comment to the user's LocalStorage, so when they return to the page, they can be confident that their voice is being heard, and feel engaged with your very engaging content. It does not make any HTTP requests. Since LocalStorage is only local, you and your database need not be burdened with other people's opinions.

[1] - https://github.com/tessalt/echo-chamber-js

Very poorly named though - one person does not an echo chamber make. They should have named it shadow-banned, because that is what it is doing.

Haha, it should use ML to generate responses that align with the posters comment xD

I’ve seen sites scraping 4chan continuously, and just republishing the chat in a different aesthetic.

The strange thing was that you could post to the site, and it would be persisted there, but it wouldn’t get forwarded to 4chan. So you could post effectively, and see continuous conversation, but no one would ever respond. An odd form of self-inflicted hellbanning.

I haven't had a positive experience with comments on my site (I took them out the other day) but I also didn't have a negative one. Usually people either posted a comment to thank me, or to note something, or to ask a question.

I removed the comments because I realized that they weren't worth the extra JS on the page and hassle of moderation.

that's a really overly negative view. You can be part of a healthy (small?) community and have normal interaction with your commenters or with the writer, as a commenter.

Maybe the trick is to not get to real success numbers, but I could think of dozens of blogs I read with 0-10 comments per post and no discernible amount of trolling, spamming (well, automated tools help ofc) and so on.

Comments, in my opinion, add nothing to a site. Most of the time they're just noise. Often, they're a distraction.

There's the occasional lucid, intelligent comment that truly elevates a post or inspires someone, but they are by far the rarity.

On the other hand, I'm speaking of comments on larger sites, not small blogs.

I have no interest in allowing comments on my personal blog. If people want to engage me, they will do so directly.

You're not talking about small blogs, but, if we talk about them.. there are some blogs like https://scottaaronson.com/blog/ for which the comment section can be often more interesting than the blog itself

I don't know which blog you've read, but that hasn't been my experience on the websites with comment sections I'm following (acoup.blog, shamusyoung.com), Twitter and HN aren't representative of the whole internet (hell, even on Twitter I can think of many example of people sharing something and receiving positive response). And even if it's negative, it doesn't mean it worthless to have.

Also on HN, even if something is negative it is usually both civil and supported with some degree of reasoning. I can't say that about many other communities where any a lot of disagreement comes with flames and toxicity.

Author here. I get your point about general comment negativity. But I've also received great feedback over the years (it wasn't 1% of all comments). People pointing out errors or out-of-date information, suggesting new ideas or simply saying "thanks". Using any comment system over email is still the preferred way for most people (based on my own comments/emails I receive). Even you decided to write this as a HN comment for everyone to read and discuss instead of sending me an email. And I think that's a good thing!

>Just look at HN

Well no offense but what are you doing here if you think that the comments are so bad? I quite disagree, hn comment threads are generally quite good quality and civil, and you will find knowledgeable people chiming in.

>almost every discussion revolves around people trying to find things to complain about

Quite meta x))

Also: here is a blog which definitely wouldn't be the same without comments https://terrytao.wordpress.com/

> what are you doing here if you think that the comments are so bad

I actually wonder this a lot, strange behavior isn't it? lol

> People don't comment unless they have a point that they want to put across, which in 99% of the cases will be something negative.

Counterpoint: I've created a blog with highly technical content a couple of years ago and put there a simple home-grown commenting system with manual moderation. I expected a lot of low quality content but actually your 99% were rather a 9% and some people spent serious time writing excellent in depth comments, pointing out the limitations of the subject or extending it it one way or another.

I guess the quality of the comments on receives is directly proportional to the time taken by the content creator to deliver good quality articles and the site UX in general. Of course there's always some noise and spam but small sites are not Reddit or HN and the comment sections don't necessarily need to reflect what you see here or on other big social sites.

I totally agree and in my haste wrote the exact same comment. Ie, don't have a comments section!

I think slowing down the speed at which a person can respond will greatly decrease low value content. And probably be better for everyone involved.

An example, my local paper is trash. Yet, to comment online I have to register and subscribe and .... it's hard, so I just don't. I don't comment, or read that paper anymore.

Which is a somewhat bad example, because I'm not consuming the content. However if something is low quality or I disagree with it, or agree even, I need to pair action with my reaction. I'm pretty busy these days. So to complain or compliment It needs to be good.

On the blog that I used for software engineering content, I would routinely get helpful things in the comments, people adding on with useful content for other readers.

Back when I blogged and people read blogs and commented on them.

"I'm more of the opinion that if you're sharing something, especially in a blog, then you should never add a comment section."

I have developed something I call an "Iceberg Article"[1] which is "... a single page of writing which links to a larger collection of supporting documents, resources and services."

One of those supporting resources could be a discussion thread - or even a forum.

I don't think every "Iceberg Article" needs to have a discussion - and none of mine do, as of yet. I think it can have its place, however.

[1] https://john.kozubik.com/pub/IcebergArticle/tip.html

Maybe it depends on the topic a blog is about or something else but I have a small blog about photography ( https://50mmf2.com ) and I've had only one slightly negative comment.

My blog isn't getting much traffic or many comments though. I would imagine that as something gets more popular it attracts more negative attention. That being said, the more popular niche photography blogs ( mainly about film photography ) have largely positive comments as well.

Promoting just an email will yield a much lower communication rate. Which might be OK in some cases but it's also nice to receive comments. As long as they are not terrible...

I also am quite strongly against comment fields.

The comment field medium isn't particularly conducive to meaningful and interesting conversations, which is ultimately what I want to promote if I put something on the Internet. At best you get posturing.

Emails (or blog posts) require more thought to be put into what's written, and they also even the playing field. It feels a lot more like a conversation compared to the blogger-commenter relation.

Yes, as a reader (and probably if I blogged) I'd rather a well-implemented backlink system (webmention?) - if someone has something meaningful to say well, or a thought out critique that's more than just a 'well actually', they can write their own post refuting (or extending or whatever) the original.

If they can't be bothered (or don't blog) then fine, but there's a more limited upside to that comment and we can probably do without it. Especially since the SNR is often so low with spam, referrals, mutually beneficial (supposedly) SEO requests, etc.

On the "no comments" option:

> However, you won't be able to build a community with people interacting with one another.

I think that building a community and writing articles are different skill sets. Some very successful bloggers ("influencers" in modern slang) are able to do both but that's not the norm for most individuals.

Sure, it's fine when you're small and it's just a few people with similar interests. But once your audience starts to grow it can be really hard work to maintain a healthy community.

I'm in this situation:

- I want to start blogging

- I don't want to blog if I won't get any feedback on what people like to read

- I don't want to admin / moderate comments because it sounds like work

- I could rely on Reddit / HN threads, but that means I don't get comment threads until I reach a critical mass of popularity. Faster Than Lime will reach the front page every time, but I won't be putting in his level of effort, so I'll get buried in a couple hours if it even gets shared.

I don't even want a community, I just want someone to say, "Hey that's kinda neat". Maybe what I need is self-hosted Medium kudos?

Maybe leave an email address for people to contact you? Otherwise you pretty much have to do moderation. Good thing is for a small blog there likely won't be very much!

> Good thing is for a small blog there likely won't be very much!

Spam is a large problem on any scale. Unless you use something that filter bots, the size of your blog doesn't matter much.

I'm the founder of Remarkbox. I want to make it clear why I went to a pay-what-you-can model, including free: https://www.remarkbox.com/remarkbox-is-now-pay-what-you-can....

Thanks for this post and for providing such a model. I've added a link in the Remarkbox section.

If you're in the UK you may wish to not add comments until after you have read the draft of the UK Online Safety Bill.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/draft-online-safe...

The short of it: You are obliged to support processes to keep people safe, protect vulnerable users, provide complaint processes... and failure to take any of this seriously can have serious financial and legal penalties.

The current draft does not differentiate between a hobby static website with comments about Raspberry Pis, and harmful content via Facebook... the penalties are equal if this is a hobby effort or if you're Facebook.

It's not a great piece of law even in draft form.

PS: @dang this might apply to HN as the definition of a site with links to the UK is merely "a significant number of UK users" without clarity on what defines significant.

Or you might want to check Schedule 1, section 5, which states that commenting is specifically exempt from the regulations and the bill is only in draft:

A user-to-user service is exempt if the functionalities of the service are limited, such that users are able to communicate by means of the service only in the following ways—

(a) posting comments or reviews relating to content produced and published by the provider of the service (or by a person acting on behalf of the provider of the service);

(b) sharing such comments or reviews on a different internet service;

(i) applying a “like” or “dislike” button or other button of that nature,

(ii) applying an emoji or symbol of any kind,

(iii) engaging in yes/no voting, or

(iv) rating or scoring the content (or the comments or reviews) in any way (including giving star or numerical ratings)

> relating to content produced and published by the provider of the service

How many places can claim that their comment section can only be used for such comments, and not for any other content? You would need to manually screen everything that was submitted to ensure it didn't stray off-topic.

Comments are helpful to get feedback and fix typos on my posts, but I turned it off on my blog after over 100k comments approved manually in the last 20+ years because of a spam issue. I got 400 spam comments per minute despite using the paid version of Akismet and keyword block list on a self-hosted WordPress blog.

Probably you were targeted if you got 400 spam comments per day. Check out OOPSpam.

> Hacker News. Similar to Reddit, but aimed towards a more technical audience. However, you don't get a dedicated space for your links.

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=darekkay.com

(I was going to say 'you do sort of', excepting that you can't stop others' submissions going there - but then I realised that's even more 'control' than Reddit gives you, since it's inherently only your site; if others submitted it it's still your content.)

I have found isso to be good for static sites. It allows posters to remain anonymous (which encourages more open discussions) and is self-hosted and simple.

https://posativ.org/isso/

I created FastComments (launched on HN!) and am happy to answer questions.

It's a really competitive space... but it's been fun.

I wrote some code for my site that 1) finds the most active link to the post on HN, and 2) uses the HN API to pull in and render its comments at the bottom. The site is statically-rendered, but there's a bit of client-side JS that loads the latest comments when you visit the page. Most of the work is done on the back-end; the front-end just grabs the content and drops it in.

Example: https://www.brandons.me/blog/three-types-of-data

Implementation: https://github.com/brundonsmith/website/blob/master/src/load...

I maintain a static blog which is small-time enough, but I did want a comments section - essentially it's the only public way I have to interact with readers directly, since I'm not a fan of the whole social networking thing. Email works, of course, but some form of visible Q&A can be helpful to others too.

Back when I set it up, I couldn't find a ready-made solution that looked good enough, so I chose to roll my own (basically an email form plus a hack to extract the json comment data from the message and rebuild the site). Since I'm dealing with a low volume of feedback, I don't have an issue with moderating/approving each comment beforehand, and spam isn't a problem... but this article could sure be helpful if that ever changes.

Emails seem a good way to add a commenting system. Most people have an email address, and it is a well-established system.

To make public the comments, you can use a public mailing list or rebuild the commented static page upon reception of a comment (email). Of course you have to take care of security threats (HTML injection, ...)

I discovered https://utteranc.es just yesterday. Nice UX, but it's built atop (and requires / supports authN only through) GitHub.

I'm in the midst of building an internal place for APIs, documentation, etc. It's shared with people we integrate with as well. We use confluence as a wiki internally, which is... OK, but.

I'm looking at redoc for the OpenAPI side of things, but would dearly love to be able to attach a static comment link to the elements to allow for questions and responses.

We have OAuth in front of it and the audience is controlled, so spam/moderation is not really relevant.

Suggestions?

@author.

Is there anyway you could put this in a github repo? Or would you give me permission to copy and paste it?

I spent an entire morning earlier this week, researching all the different options and the pros/cons of static site commenting, just with google, and discovered this post today and it's way more complete than all of my research. haha

This could be a real nice resource for people.

Great post.

> Is there anyway you could put this in a github repo? Or would you give me permission to copy and paste it?

I once handled such resources in separate repositories (e.g. "best practices", "accessibility notes"), but I've decided to put them under my blog instead. Less maintenance, single place for all my projects.

But it's totally fine if you want to maintain such a list yourself! If you don't copy my blog post exactly and maybe include a back link, feel free to do so. (if you do, please share a link, so I can subscribe to changes)

> I spent an entire morning earlier this week, researching all the different options and the pros/cons of static site commenting, just with google, and discovered this post today and it's way more complete than all of my research.

Thanks! I think the reason is that I wrote this post in 2018 and update it every time I find something new. I've setup HN email notifications for some related keywords (like "Disqus") to learn about new tools and add them to my post.

I am confused about the self-hosted section of this document ...

If I operate a static site, presumably I am using neither php nor a database ... and I wouldn't add things like that to enable comments.

But then how do the comments function ?

Are there really javascript-only comment engines that store their data ... in flat files ? I'm not sure that's possible ...

I used to have Disqus on my blog but the overhead wasn't worth it. The vanishingly rare times someone has reached out to me it's been via Twitter.

Definitely a great read especially if you're thinking of incorporating a comment section on the website.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com