letterpad
Should comments be internal feature ?
Comments is still a question for us. Maintaining comments will be super difficult if we decide to build it internally. Comment Integration can be done with Disqus (which we had previously) and but removed because we felt it was too commercial. Now that letterpad is a platform, it does make sense to have our own commenting app as well.
Thoughts ?
Honestly there's no need for comments (from a reader's perspective) there's already a subscriber feature and potential contact information of the blog writer, they read the post and if they have any comments they could just forward them elsewhere to emails or twitter or whatever platform they want to use. I think comments should be only a writer's concern, no need to directly implement it
Another reason why the commenting feature will be useless is because if the readers hate the post then they simply hate it, they will stop reading it, if they have suggestions they will simply want to contact the writer if they care enough
However the point is that if they like the blog they will continue reading, otherwise they won't which would be making the comment feature implementation a bit unnecessary
(Basically there are already other ways to add comments, there's no need for a direct implementation) and assuming that the blogger will post their link on a social platform they will just simply receive comments from said platform that they promoted their link on
E.g. if they promote on twitter then those concerned will just reply to the promotion telling them what they liked or disliked
Comments also opens up a scope for potential XSS issues or for API security issues
The objective here is to keep this platform good while minimizing attack surfaces, if we start for example adding a bunch of add-ons bullcrap or whatever like wordpress then that would be creating more attack surfaces, if we start adding comments then more potential for injection attacks, all the readers should be doing is reading the content, not being allowed to inject or put anything anywhere on the page
Focus on keeping the bloggers account secure and focus on keeping your API endpoints secure, go through every logic process of this platform and make sure that from a coding standpoint that there won't be a logic faulty issue, make sure everything is going to behave how it should behave and whatever libraries you're using or language just make sure to keep everything updated and search for secure practices, vulnerabilities relating to vendors, etc, etc
Thanks @acudroit for your suggestions. I agree with the points you mentioned mostly because of the complexity that comments bring up. If I reply to someone else's comment, then all participants should be notified about my comment through email. Also you need to be registered in order to comment.
Comments can bring engagement but it comes with a lot of cost. IMHO I would like to see some gamification like -
- total number people who read the post
- total likes of the post
But even for that, we need all users to be registered to avoid spam. This might come at a later stage, but for now I agree that we should leave comments.
Currently I see that an open source commenting library is used for this purpose, however it requires Github login which defies the purpose of building a blogging platform that can also cover those who don't have a Github account and/or don't want to open one. It may be turning off for many people just to see that they have to open another account to be able to comment a 1-liner.
Because Letterpad now has community around it, internal comments are essential for more engagement. This is already released.