Try Out the New Disqus 2012
blog.disqus.com
blog.disqus.com
I'm amazed at how much worthwhile comment (albeit with a horrible SNR) is still trapped in phpBB forum sites, blog comments, and other basically painful to access places. Within startups and technology, generally quora or hn or stack overflow or blogs themselves seem adequate, but whenever I search for info about my car, firearms, legal, DIY, etc., it feels like a bad version of 2003.
There's still no good solution to the "local newspaper comment quality problem", though.
I really don't agree with that. Standard internet forums have a very important role in internet community, they can't just be replaced by blogs. If you approach forums as just a source of information then sure, they could be replaced by a blog because "why not put all the information I want in blog posts?" but internet forums are so much more than just a source of information. They're about sharing, community and discovery, if you only ever use forums because google search results contain links to them then your opinion is very skewed.
HN is better software than any forum-type software I've seen, but isn't used anywhere else.
Reddit might be the second best, but despite trying many times, I really can't get into it, even with subreddits.
Posts drop off the front page after a day. I've never seen a way to prevent this happening, there really needs to be a way to sort by "most recent comments" on the post pages.
The comment threading would need a small overhaul so it isn't mostly nested anymore. So the first response to a comment stays flat and the second response braches to a new comment node. Comment threads only growing to 8 comments deep before "continuing on a new page" is a bummer, this would keep almost all the discussion on a single one.
Google Groups has gone through two major iterations, and is now basically useless.
People might not want Google to have their personal information (I'd say people probably trust Facebook more than Google with "sharing social information" -- this isn't entirely rational), but forum posts are basically things you want to have public.
It's got a "community management" piece which Google probably couldn't get right, but they could provide tools to people/groups to run forums. The big plus for users would be aggregating content (RSS++), anti-spam, etc.
Facebook Groups is probably the best "small group sharing info" tool right now, and it's inherently non-indexed.
It looks like Disqus is part of the way there, depending on their API you could maybe even hack together this functionality without having to write much of this yourself.
I think most people are perfectly capable of understanding threaded comments. It actually seems a little degrading to say that they are too confusing for non-programmers.
I mean, reddit itself proves that it's not unsustainable in a general case. I honestly don't know how reddit's comment system is confusing to anyone. (What I'm describing is literally just reddit but replies bump the topic, and there would be less volume as they're topic/question driven forums).
Besides, are you arguing Disqus has implemented a bad idea? Because they're more or less doing what I'm talking about, but instead of having "multiple topics", it's just attached to a blog post. Imagine a listing of blog posts where the "post" is the "topic starter". Bam, it's done. You have a "forum" with topics and replies that are threaded, organized and voted on for accuracy. That's my biggest problem with forums is that anyone can post, there's often no moderation (and if there is, it's not for correctness) and people say just asinine things when they think they're correct and don't stop to think about what they're saying or whether or not they're qualified to be giving other people help.
edit: Oh, you think reddit has bad UI. Um... I mean, you did disclose it as your opinion. I love it. It's minimal, it's fast, it's content focused and it's pretty easy to use. It's certainly not flashy, no, but then most phpbb2 forums go the exact opposite route, where content takes up 1% of the physical page space, there are gaudy signatures and grandiose themes. Most people are used to hierarchical outlines. Basically anyone who has ever been to school or read a reference paper/document/manual of any kind.
Thanks in advance!
We're trying to go with guided, designed experiences that makes it attractive to participate — not punishing.
The simple reason is the prohibitive pricing for pro features. Down the road we will need control over authentication, so that we can roll in more interactivity on our website (premium content, interactive and community features).
Disqus offers this feature for pro users, but at $300/month its just not feasible. As a media site that hopes for small 4-figure revenue monthly, $300 is just way outside our budget for a third-party service like this. It would need to be more like $30/m to be in the ballpark really.
I guess we aren't the people they are targeting, but i hope Disqus considers a much lower tier with single sign-on and without some of the other pro features (we aren't interested in analytics, can live without realtime, theme editor, priority support). I wonder how many other "pro-bloggers" and "small businesses" (2 things listed under 'who is this for') are alienated with the high pricing.
In any case, looks really good!
Just change the http:// prefix to https:// in the universal code (e.g., https://yourforumshortname.disqus.com/embed.js) and you're good to go. Works with all our files: embed.js, count.js, everything except media attachments (which we're working on).
Give it a shot. If it doesn't work holler our way at http://disqus.com/support. Happy to lend a hand.
UPDATE: Caveat: I'm referring to the current version of Disqus, not Disqus 2012. SSL support for 2012 is on our radar.
I just hope they have a solid business and don't get bought by BigCo for talent or fear of competition.
Example user flow illustrating brokenness:
1. Open Firefox.
2. Disable JS.
3. Go to:
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/05/twitter-brings-you-closer.html
http://avc.disqus.com/?url=http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/05/twitter-brings-you-closer.html
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/#visible-focus
7. Follow the "Go home" link:
http://disqus.com/
9. Click "Sign Up".
10. Click "Create commenter account".
11. There are big buttons in the page ("Facebook", "Twitter", "Google") that do nothing.
As a web developer who cares about frontend code and UI quality, this sort of thing is enough to put me off integrating with Disqus. Which is a shame, as I think commenting-as-a-service is a great idea.
Now, only HN needs to fall in line and all comment-thread-hijacking problems will be gone!