I’ve had to strip out the code for the ratings system for the comments. It was causing massive overload on my server, which caused — once again — my hosting account to be suspended.
At least, I hope it was the ratings plugin and the associated code. If it wasn’t that, we’re sure to run into another server overload.
Offloading the comments to a service like Disqus is pretty much the only option I have left at this point. But the moment I attempted the move to Disqus, I ran into problems: The plugin for Movable Type that Disqus says is supposed to work just fine with this version of the software isn’t working. There’s universal, platform-agnostic code I could use, but it won’t import the existing comments here… and with nearly 60,000 of them, I certainly do not want to lose them. I’m waiting to hear back from Disqus about possible solutions, but the longer I don’t hear from them, the less encouraging a sign that is, I suspect.
I may have to try Echo, even though it’s gonna cost a packet…
Would forums be an alternative altogether? I hate to think of you paying (more) for a service that could be provided for free. I would suggest non-moderated forums with karma ratings…but alas, I have absolutely no skills in that department and couldn’t even point you in any one specific direction.
I really didn’t care one way or the other about ratings. Frankly, people often start obsessing over ratings in lieu of actually having conversations. So I won’t miss them if it makes the site run smoother.
I’m with Jurgan. They were a “nice-to-have,” but not a “must-have” as far as I’m concerned.
Won’t miss the ratings system but I do enjoy gobshiteing in the comments section at 2 in the morning.
Goodbye to the comments and posts ratings.
Why not keep the existing comments, just disable adding new comments and then add Disqus below them? I don’t really know the inner workings of moveable type, but if its anything like any other bit of web code, that should be really easy to do. Right?
Comments ratings always seemed kinda high school; won’t miss them a bit.
Comments ratings also seem very facebook- I honestly didn’t think they added much.
I liked things much better before we were being ‘rated and ranked’. I’ll be more likely to comment without those in place.
Happy with the old system, but then again if the people who were happy with the old system were enough to keep the site going then MAJ wouldn’t need to try these new things.
Losing “subscribe to follow-up comments by email”, however, will pretty much stop me from commenting at all. If that’s causing too much of a server load, would an RSS feed per page, giving the new comments there, be a viable alternative? (Blogspot does that.)
Yeah I miss the subscribe option – would an rss feed be possible?