I was rather hoping Disqus would be a 100% plug-in replacement for the woefully inadequate coComment so I could simply track all the comments I leave on assorted blogs and easily monitor other comment threads of interest.
An RSS feed of such comment activity would be an ideal element to feed into the Tumble dryer.
Disqus launched yesterday and as it was written in Django, looks OK and isn’t too invasive or distracting (c.f BlogRush), I have enabled the WordPress plugin on this blog.
Comments can now be threaded (just like serendipity) and (thankfully) you don’t need to register with Disqus to leave a comment.
Comments can be rated and the comments are hosted on Disqus forums.
Paul Stamatiou wrote a excellent review about the features in Disqus and Techcrunch also reviewed the software.
I have some minor concerns:
- I currently use Spam Karma to handle comment spam on this blog. SK2 is unbelievably efficient and far superior than Akismet. I can count on the fingers of one hand, the number of comments and trackback spam that got past SK2 so I have some concerns about reverting to an inferior spam filtering solution.
- Until every blog in the world integrates Disqus, I still won’t be able to track all of my comments. Still, I am still waiting for the world to universally adopt Emacs and Supercite so email works properly so I guess I can live with that.
- Although you are supposed to be able to quickly and easily import Disqus comments back into WordPress, I need to check how this is implemented.
- It is not clear whether Disqus will currently work on hosted WordPress.
Obviously, the ‘Recent Comments’ widget is now defunct so I replaced that with a RSS widget for the new Disqus Comments RSS feed. I’ll try Disqus out for a while as an experiment but I guess the most important and valuable feedback will be from readers of this blog. Without you, I am nothing, a lone voice in the darkness, a blog in isolation.
So if you have any thoughts, just leave a comment.