Earlier this week we made the transition to a new commenting system on this blog. We had been using an adapted version of the commenting system that comes with WordPress (the system that this blog is built on) but after feedback from regular readers of the site, we decided to switch over to a system with more features.
We decided on the Intense Debate system, which is a third-party system — owned by the same company that owns WordPress — that allows users to keep a single profile across multiple sites.
As a result, even if you’ve commented on the site before, you’ll have to register an account with Intense Debate to post new comments.
We hope that this slight barrier to entry will improve the level of discourse on the site. You only have to register once and after that commenting is very simple.
You can register using this link. The new system offers a lot of benefits:
- Comment Voting –– Comments are organized by rating with the most useful comments appearing at the top of the commenting section. Once you’ve registered, you can downvote unhelpful comments and promote useful comments.
- Improved Threading — Multi-level conversation threading (new comments appearing directly underneath the existing comments they’re referring to) will help clean up the discussion section on each article.
- Improved Email Subscription For Comments — You can now choose what kind of email notifications you want. You can subscribe to all comments on an article, only comments that are in reply to your comment, or opt out completely.
- User-Controlled Comment Sorting — You can sort comments by date, by last activity, or by rating. Rating is the default sorting option, but it’s ultimately up to you.
- Spell Check — You can check your comment for typos before submitting it.
- Embed YouTube Videos — You can embed YouTube videos directly into your comment.
- Create A Poll — Once registered, you can create a quick poll to get the opinion of your fellow commenters.
- Insert Images — You can insert an image (hosted elsewhere) into your comment.
It’s not a perfect system, but we think over time it will be much more useful for all our commenters. Feel free to test it out in the comment section under this article or any other other post on the blog.
