I don’t want to get rid of the ability to comment on my reviews and other posts: I just want to find an alternative to Disqus that isn’t evil. (Here are a few discussions about why Disqus is so problematic.)
WordPress’s native commenting system isn’t great, but it’s one possibility I’m considering.
Other options I’m looking at are ReplyBox, Commento, and Talk. If you have experience with these platforms, or any other commenting services you really like, please do drop a comment below and let me know about it.
I would be sure to choose an option in which no existing comments would be lost in the changeover, but I’m not sure how easy it would be for those who’ve been commenting here for a long time to claim their previous comments, or connect any new commenting profile to older comments. Which is a pain in the neck, I know. I would try to make any transition as painless as possible.
A wacky side idea first, which I admit is not an answer to the question you asked. I’ve had some experience recently using and running public Discourse forums, and they’re remarkably spam-resistant out of the box, as well as extremely pleasant to use. It would certainly be possible to set one up so that it would generate a new topic whenever you posted something here, and then bring comments back to these pages. (There’s a “wp-discourse” plugin for WordPress which claims to do all these things.) The software is free, but hosting would be an ongoing cost.
(Note that that’s Discourse s distinct from Discord, which is really just another centralised data-stealing thing like Disqus, but which pretends to belong to the individual operators.)
For my own blogs and bloglike sites I just filter by the poster’s email address, but this does mean that new posters’ comments don’t appear immediately, and that may be a concern.
Those three Disqus-alternatives all look reasonably workable; I haven’t used any of them.
I’m not sure sending readers to another site is the best idea. And wow, $100 per month for hosting! There’s no way I could afford that.
Thanks for the suggestion, though — I do appreciate it. Honestly, I’m not sure there are any great options out there. :-(
I’m not sure sending readers to another site is the best idea. And wow, $100 per month for hosting! There’s no way I could afford that.
Thanks for the suggestion, though — I do appreciate it. Honestly, I’m not sure there are any great options out there. :-(
For what it’s worth if you self-host it’s about a third that cost, but I do take your point.
Even a third would be too much. :-(