Try Out the New Disqus 2012(blog.disqus.com)
blog.disqus.com
Try Out the New Disqus 2012
http://blog.disqus.com/post/22325598158/try-out-disqus-2012
17 comments
> is still trapped in phpBB forum sites
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.
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.
I like forums and community discussion, I just don't like the forum software widely used. phpBB and similar are a colossal step backward from what we had before (USENET).
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.
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.
phpBB bugs me too. I have two problems with using HN or reddit to fill the void though.
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.
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.
This is the product I wish Google would build, rather than a shitty Facebook knockoff.
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.
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.
I wouldn't want it integrated with current sites though. I'd like it self-hostable and with separate account signups. "Login with facebook/gmail" is ok but for some people that's a privacy barrier that they won't cross.
I have long longed-for a reddit styled forum. Threaded, lightweight comments (kill "signatures", whoever thought that was a good idea), with the same sort of new-post-bumps-topic forum style.
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.
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.
None of the 10 year old forum communities I can find use threading. Are you aware of any? To me, this indicates that threading isn't sustainable in the general case of online communities that type paragraphs to each other. Programmers love it as a data structure, but it's just too confusing for everyone else.
IMDB?
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 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.
What? I can't say I've ever seen a "forum" employ threading at all because no forum software supports what I'm describing. Unless you mean that like in mailing lists (which is an example of what you're asking for) or that disgusting nonsense called threading in VBulletin which is absolutely not what I'm talking about.
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.
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.
I honestly can't think of a single way HN's software is superior to reddit's from my standpoint (as a user), so I'm curious -- what is it you like better about it?
It's less ugly. It's simpler.
I agree that Reddit has a terrible user interface (IMO, obviously) and it's amazing it has the traction it does. Of course we could also say the same thing about the vast majority of forum software, too. Apparently human communities are very, very good at getting software to fit their social needs even when the UI is suboptimal.
How specific of you...
Agree completely. I can't say much more other than, uh, "stay tuned".
Wow, if you kill the expert-sexchange of forum software, you'll be 2 for 2.
Thanks in advance!
Thanks in advance!
Disqus has never gotten enough credit for their design. People forget how crappy comments used to look. When Disqus came out, everyone eventually copied their design. With Disqus 2012, I think that's going to happen again. They are leading the way.
This just looks like Reddit with avatars though.
My biggest annoyance with Disqus is that you can't tell in advance what requirements it will make in terms of signing in. Some sites have openid and some don't, some are okay with anonymous comments and some aren't. Usually you have to type some junk, hit post and then find out what you'll be allowed to use and give up, or comment as appropriate. Sometimes I forget, write an insightful comment and then find I can't actually post it.
Yeah, this is actually one of the biggest things we wanted to address with the new version: the inconsistency for end-users. Disqus is quite configurable, but it caused a number of barriers that was detrimental for the websites themselves.
We're trying to go with guided, designed experiences that makes it attractive to participate — not punishing.
We're trying to go with guided, designed experiences that makes it attractive to participate — not punishing.
The new changes look excellent and i'm excited to roll them out on our site. Unfortunately, however great it is won't stop us from planning to migrate away from disqus and on to a custom-built system.
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.
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.
Exactly the reason why I couldn't use it on my site. I would gladly pay the $300/month after the site generates decent revenue. But it is a huge barrier to entry for small projects. I wish they had a plan where you pay nothing for single-sign-on till you hit 5K or so comments every week.
Can you ping us at biz@disqus -- would love to discuss and see how we can help. Thanks.
If you want to play around with this live, I noticed it's been running on AVC for a week or so: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/05/twitter-brings-you-closer.ht...
Quite honestly, I was skeptical about these changes upon first looking at the Community tab in the screenshot. Then I scrolled down to the end of the post, where you can actually see the new comment system in action. It does indeed seem like a significant improvement, including the new Community tab. In a day and age when it seems a lot of companies make UI changes that are actually a step backward, bravo to Disqus for the enhancements. Well done!
I didn't see a link, but I'd be interested to know if and how the integration changes for sites implementing the new Disqus.
In any case, looks really good!
In any case, looks really good!
There's no changes required by publishers (users implementing Disqus). It works with the same embed code as before.
Interesting; I has assumed as much from "The new Disqus integrates in a way that is naturally discoverable by Google — out of the box, without any extra work." <- this did not require any changes on the user end?
I wondered this... I'd actually planned to use the API to embed the comments, but haven't had time to implement yet.
That's pretty awesome! And great for developers that have integrated Disqus into their software too.
If you are interested in how we do the realertime notifications stay tuned for a blog post (and talk at EuroPython). Hint it isn't node.js.
gevent?
Does it support SSL yet? Last I checked (admittedly, about 6 months ago), it seemed Disqus could not be used at full-SSL sites.
Yup we've supported SSL for almost that long now actually ;)
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.
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.
In general, wouldn't you just support leaving the protocol out and changing the universal code embed to just `://yourforumshortname.disqus.com/embed.js`? Isn't this best-practices these days, as it covers both cases best?
The video mentions that they use a technique to include comments that provides proper SEO (and feels natural to Google). Any information on what they've done? I remember previously, they had a WordPress plugin that brought Disqus comments back to your site for SEO purposes.
We'll be talking more about this in the future. For now it's mostly in prototype/draft form, but we have confirmed that it is supported.
from the comment thread on the blog post, one of the devs responded to the Q "So I guess this uses Google's AJAX/JavaScript crawler feature?" with "That's right. Content is still not in the page HTML, but it'll be compatible with the new crawler."
I love Disqus. They are one of the few startups building seemingly unsexy but solid fundamental tech.
I just hope they have a solid business and don't get bought by BigCo for talent or fear of competition.
I just hope they have a solid business and don't get bought by BigCo for talent or fear of competition.
Nice, now all the racist crap at the bottom of Drudge-linked articles will look like YouTube comments instead of Yahoo! comments.
Is Disqus more friendly to screen readers / impaired users? In the past its reliance on Javascript has made it painful for accessibility software, but the SEO improvements might have made things nicer now. This is the big objection to deploying Disqus on our site.
We've gotten positive feedback from early testers who use screen readers. Let us know if there are still gaps. Accessibility is a priority for us.
Accessibility isn't just about screen readers.
Example user flow illustrating brokenness:
1. Open Firefox.
2. Disable JS.
3. Go to:
7. Follow the "Go home" link:
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.
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.
Will it remove the unnecessary scare-warning about third party cookies?
Finally, collapsible comment threads! awesome.
Now, only HN needs to fall in line and all comment-thread-hijacking problems will be gone!
Now, only HN needs to fall in line and all comment-thread-hijacking problems will be gone!
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looks pretty good - I am of the belief that anonymous comment posting should not have a place on the internet simple because of the poor quality of conversation it leads to. Would have been nice if they had innovated in this desperately need area of real IDs for comments. Image all the shitty comments that will disappear when people have to back them with real name id.
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.