When Disqus (a comment management system) launched, Mashable and Chris Brogan signed up with glowing smiles.
The features of the service looked great. Even the name was kinda catchy. I signed up, too.
2.5 months and hundreds of comments later, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve given Disqus a solid test drive.
As of today, I’ve reverted to the comment form that came with my Woo theme.
Here’s why:
1. I want full control over my content. Disqus doesn’t give me that. They’ve promised better integration between their service and Wordpress in the future. When that future arrives, I’ll reassess the situation. In the meantime, I’ve removed Disqus and am slowly working my way through the mayhem it left behind.
2. I want an escape hatch in case of system failure. Disqus doesn’t give me that. Threading–the nesting of related comments–falls apart when Disqus is experiencing server problems or if a user decides to abandon the service. Check out the comments on this post for an example of what Disqus does when you shut it off. (Disqus thanked me for leaving by installing 7 additional copies of each comment on the post.)
3. I want solid spam filtering. Disqus has a lot of work to do to bring its filter up to Akismet’s level. I turned off “reactions” weeks ago (imported comments from FriendFeed, tweets, etc) because Disqus failed to give life only to legitimate remarks. I’m not the only one with spam issues. Disqus seems to have a lot of trouble keeping spam off their very own blog.
Does this mean Disqus is wrong for you? I’m not sure. They’ve got some really nice platform integration between Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed that does a lot to add noise below posts that aren’t getting any legitimate action of their own. [yes, that was sarcasm] If you’re committed to producing great content that inspires your readers to join you in discussion, I think you’ll be okay without Disqus. In its current form, I think we’d all be okay without Disqus.
I’ve spoken with @Giannii from Disqus many times over the past few weeks. He’s a great guy and promises many lovely things to come from Disqus in the future.
In the meantime, Disqus has placed hundreds of spam comments on my blog that I’ll have to go through and delete manually.
In the epic words of so many with broken limbs, black eyes, and headaches: “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
What do you think? Am I whining too much? Should I quietly be grateful for the chance to try new things and chock all a service’s problems up to development issues?
Years ago, news spread virally through a phone system called a “party line”. Switchboards were slow and phone lines expensive so the system rewarded those who shared phone lines. No call was private because neighbors could pick up and listen at any time. (This happened with succulent regularity.) The party line was great for keeping a small community buzzing.