New Comments System: Introducing Disqus

THIS POST IS WAS STICKY- MORE RECENT POSTS APPEAR BELOW.

You may have noticed that we've changed our commenting system this weekend. There are still a few kinks to iron out but overall the switch seems to have worked so I wanted to explain some of the many benefits Disqus comments will bring.

What are the benefits for you?:

1. A much improved commenting system. In the past we've installed various features designed to improve our blog comments, such as the ability to edit mistakes after you've posted, or the option to receive others' replies via email. Inevitably, system upgrades and changes to our website caused problems with these plugins and stopped them working. Now, all of this is handled by Disqus. You should be able to edit your comments, receive replies to email, reply to these replies by email, and if you wish subscribe to a post's comments by RSS. You can also show your appreciation for another person's comment by anonymously clicking 'Like'. By the same token, if you feel a comment is offensive or spammy you can easily flag it for review.


2. True ownership of your comments. Before, all of your comments were stored on our site only. Now, if you sign up to Disqus you'll have your own Disqus profile where any comment you make on any site which uses Disqus is stored. Here's mine.


3. An identity on EA. Instead of just a name and icon, you can now upload an avatar to your Disqus profile. You can also share things such as information about yourself, links to your own website/ Twitter page and so on. Disqus also includes social features- for example if you give it your Twitter details you'll have the option to tweet your comments.

There's much more information about all of this over at Disqus.

What are the benefits for us?:

1. Greater protection from trolls and flamers. If you're signed up to Disqus it will be more difficult for someone to imitate you on EA (thankfully a very rare occurrence, but one that can ruin an entire discussion when it happens). It will also be more obvious when someone is posting multiple times under multiple names.


2. Easing the load on our server. Because Disqus hosts the comments and serves them up on our site we save on disk space and bandwidth which, slowly but surely, saves us money.


3. It's one less headache when we move to our new site. Not only will we have all had a chance to get used to Disqus, but we're hoping that it will solve the problems we've had in moving comments over to our new site.

To summarise: please consider signing up for Disqus. Once you do this you can claim your comments from our pre-Disqus days.

For the time being you'll be able to comment on the site as a guest (giving just your name and an email address, as in the old days). However in a couple of weeks we may switch to pre-moderating all guest comments- this will mean that the only way to have your comments appear immediately on site will be to be signed in. (If you don't want to sign up to Disqus and create a profile you can also sign in via a Twitter, OpenID or Yahoo account, though this will mean you won't be able to use some of Disqus' best features.)

Thanks to everyone for putting up with a few bugs on the site this weekend and in the coming days as we get everything up to speed- hopefully it's been for the best.

Comments

[gunni]

Hallo Mike,
I am still fighting with Mr. disqus - what can I do ?
When I asked to register myself - Mr. disqus answered:
"Your user name may only contain alphanumeric characters and underscores and must start and end with an alphanumeric character."
But disqus is able to show every comment I have posted on EA.
Do you have any idea ?
Thank you and best regards gunni

[Mike]

Your comments will still show here but they're posted as if you were a guest who Disqus doesn't know- so we can still see them but they're not officially 'yours' if you see what I mean. Once you're signed up to Disqus you can claim them and they'll be linked to your Disqus profile for ever.

"Your user name may only contain alphanumeric characters and underscores and must start and end with an alphanumeric character."

This means you can only use letters, numbers and _'s- and the first letter of the username must be a letter or a number. I suspect they also mean *English* letters, so ü's and é's etc probably won't be accepted.

(Also, remember your username needs to be totally unique so you may need to use something a bit longer than just 'gunni'.)

[gunni]

You think I have to change my name? In this case - how I can claim my written comments? Thanks for your help - regards gunni

[Mike]

If you find one of your old comments (just one of the ones on this thread will be fine) and click the little icon of the man's head a box should pop up and in it there should be a message that says 'If this is you, claim it now to manage your comments.'

Catherine has done is today and claimed over a thousand comments so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it all works as it should.

[Arshama]

Mike,

Thank you so much for all your efforts and explanations!
I finally managed to manage my comments on EA, which started in July 2009 ;-)
And it is so nice to recover all those entries I was looking for without knowing their exact date.
Disqus is really great -- kheyli mamnun :-)

[Catherine]

Mike,
RE Firefox crashes,
My browser just crashed again as I tried to go from this thread, after finishing my post above, to the EA home page - an operation which refreshes the page, right?

[Arshama]

Hi Mike and Catherine,
Firefox crashes occurred during the start phase, exactly for the same reason, but no incidents since yesterday. I installed the Addon easyComment, perhaps it helps...
Chapeau to this fast implementation, Mike, and thanks a lot :-)
Arshama

[Catherine]

Arshama and Mike,
I have crashes not just after leaving a thread where I've posted, but also when I'm just surfing through the EA site while being logged in to Disqus.
Is easyComment a FFX add-on? I'm still a bit new to FFX. How do you get it?

[Catherine]

Mike,
Could you check this out when you have the time? If a reader replies to himself, the reply button seems to disappear. See:
http://enduringamerica.com/2010/05/02/iran-eyewitness-the-movement-is-still-strong-and-vibrant/#comment-48128044" rel="nofollow">http://enduringamerica.com/2010/05/02/iran-eyew...
M.Ali [Moderator] Today 09:47 AM in reply to M.Ali

[Mike]

Notifications- is anyone else not receiving any? I've never had a problem with this.

Firefox- I'm not sure. Which version of it are you using? I'm using the latest version on a Mac and Disqus sites don't seem to upset it.

Dates- these are set to absolute at our end, but you can override these settings here: http://disqus.com/account/" rel="nofollow">http://disqus.com/account/ ('Date and time formatting')

Missing comments- we may just have to wait on these. I can try asking Disqus to take a look later on if they don't appear.

Avatar size- I've changed this from medium to large.

[Mike]

I suspect this might actually be because I've set a limit on thread comments (ie the number of times you can reply to a reply). It's not ideal but if it's unlimited you end of with comments that look

l
i
k
e

t
h
i
s

as they try to squeeze in ever smaller widths.

My current plans for the new site use a bit more space overall, and a lot more space for the main post/ comments column, so hopefully we'll be able to allow threaded comments to go on for a bit longer before this happens.

I should also point out that some issues will be on Disqus' side and EA won't have any control over them. Their staff are very active in helping people so if anyone does have any problems that we can't fix it might be worth searching here:
http://getsatisfaction.com/disqus" rel="nofollow">http://getsatisfaction.com/disqus

[Catherine]

Mike,
RE the disappearing reply button, here's an example where the reader replies to me, not himself, and the reply button has vanished. Is this because his post is "too deep"? If so, that's not much room for this talkative bunch :-)
M.Ali Yesterday 04:58 PM in reply to Catherine
http://enduringamerica.com/2010/05/02/the-latest-from-iran-2-may-persistence/#comment-48034665" rel="nofollow">http://enduringamerica.com/2010/05/02/the-lates...

Personally, I find the layout with indented replies extremely messy. The numbered posts in chronological order we had before were far easier for me to follow and reply to by citing the name and number of the post. I don't know what the possibilities are in Disqus to make the layout - just imo - a bit more straightforward.

[Mike]

I've also just changed one setting in the Disqus plugin for this website which may make comment and reaction counts more accurate- let's see if it works.

It's something to do with Javascript loading so there's an outside chance it might also solve Firefox crash issues, but this sort of thing is way beyond my knowledge so don't ask me why :)

[Catherine]

Hi Mike,
Now that I can see you (thank you for enlarging the avatar size), you are the spitting image of a French friend of mine who is a dancer in the Nederlands Dans Theater!!! :-)

Notifications - I didn't receive any for a thread I was active on even 3 hours after I had registered, but I'm receiving lots now. I'll keep on eye on it.

Firefox - I use the latest version of FFX on various windows machines with XP..

Dates - I set them in my account to absolute as soon as I registered, but I still see times like 9 minutes ago and yesterday on the site

I've read you posts after this one, so thanks for fiddling with the javascript, your explanation about # of replies to replies is clear, and thanks for all the other things you're doing for us as well.

[Arshama]

Catherine,
It's very easy (even I got it ;-)
Just click on "Extras" at the top bar and you find Add-ons in the drop-down menue. Click on Add-ons, search for easyComment and add it to Firefox.
After installation a restart is perhaps necessary. That's all.
But I won't guarantee for the rest ;-)

[Arshama]

VIRUS ALERT!!!

TO ALL USERS: First PDF Worm Hits PC Users
http://McAfee.com" rel="nofollow">McAfee.com warns against "Peachy" worm, which targets users of Adobe's popular PDF file format. http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/863001" rel="nofollow">http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.ph...

[Mike]

You found him! My long-lost French twin!

I'm now noticing that absolute and relative times aren't showing correctly- I've tried changing it and changing it back but will keep it in the list of things to check with Disqus if it doesn't settle down.

[What brand of portable GPS sys]

[...] New Comments System: Introducing Disqus | Enduring America [...]

[perry1949]

Ok, I don't like adding third party cookies but I'm here.

[perry1949]

Well, that post crashed firefox. I've added easyComment so lets see if it crashes this time.

[perry1949]

No crash that time so I guess easyComment helped.

[theali]

Looks good on Opera :D

[Blue Screen Restart | Blue Scr]

[...] New Comments System: Introducing Disqus | Enduring America [...]

[Bijan77]

Had to add a number to my previous name but easy besides that and like the new format. Thank you Mike for the efforts to get this running.

[Erik]

Working fine with Yahoo login.