Introducing the New Kottke.org Comments
For the past few months, I’ve been working on a new commenting system for kottke.org and today I’m launching it in beta. If you’re a kottke.org member, you can try it out by heading to the comment section of this very post. (More on this in a bit but: comments are public but only members can post them.) I wrote up some community guidelines; I’d appreciate you reading them before participating.
So why comments? And why now? Blog comments have been long since left for dead, a victim of spam, social media, toxicity, and neglect. But there are still plenty of sites out there with thriving communities. My particular favorite is Cup of Jo, which has some of the best comment threads on the web:
They are always good, often great, and occasionally sublime. Years and even decades after most websites have removed their comment sections for being toxic and unwieldy, Cup of Jo readers are in there delivering on the original promise of the web as a way to connect humans with one another by providing advice, reflections, stories, and support to each other.
Why can’t we have that here on kottke.org? I think we can. “Always good, often great, and occasionally sublime” describes a lot of the feedback I get via email and social media — kottke.org readers are a super-interesting bunch and very often share things that are more interesting than whatever thing I posted that prompted them to write in. Reader comments become more valuable to everyone who reads the site when they’re relocated from my inbox and from disparate threads on various social sites to the site itself. Some days, my inbox is the best thing on the internet and I want to bring that vibe to the site.
The timing feels right. Twitter has imploded and social sites/services like Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon are jockeying to replace it (for various definitions of “replace”). People are re-thinking what they want out of social media on the internet and I believe there’s an opportunity for sites like kottke.org to provide a different and perhaps even better experience for sharing and discussing information. Shit, maybe I’m wrong but it’s definitely worth a try.
As I mentioned above, comments can be read by anyone but only active members of kottke.org can post comments. I’ve done it this way for two main reasons:
- The biggest reason is moderation. I am a big believer in the active moderation and facilitation of conversation in social spaces (*glances sideways at various social media trash fires*). By making commenting members-only, I’m hoping for a manageable number of comments from people who are already inclined to support the well-being of the site so that I can maximize the time I spend posting to the site.
- I have been very deliberate about making sure everything I produce is available on the open web — it’s at the heart of the site’s membership program. But allowing members to comment and help build a community on the site seems like a good way to provide some extra benefit to those who have chosen to support the site (and the development of the comment system itself) while keeping everything I do publicly available.
My friend Tim put it more succinctly: “Tying [comments] to membership creates good, aligned incentives and makes moderation easier and meaningful.” Yeah, that!
I realize basing a person’s ability to comment on kottke.org on their ability to contribute financially is not ideal. In a perfect world, I would hire a moderator or two to help me facilitate conversation here and open it up to anyone and everyone. But kottke.org is still a small, one-person site and I can’t swing that right now, particularly for a new thing like this. Anyone can still comment on posts on social media and I very much welcome your feedback and input via email.
Ok, that’s the vision. Now for some logistics:
- Not every post on kottke.org will have comments, but I’ll be turning them on for posts that have a chance of generating some good feedback and discussion. Both main posts and Quick Links can have comment threads attached to them. I’m gonna start slow, but hopefully there will be at least a few threads to participate in every day.
- Did I mention the community guidelines? I’d love for you to read them before participating here!
- As I said above, the comment system is in beta and I am looking for feedback, suggestions, complaints, etc., either in the comments below or via email. Help me kick the tires a little bit.
- I use Memberful for the membership program and if you have trouble logging in (e.g. getting stuck in a login death loop) in order to comment, it might have something to do with a browser extension or ad blocker that you have installed. Temporarily disabling them will likely fix the problem. If you’re still having trouble, send me an email!
Ok, that’s all I have for now. Go try it out! ⬇️ I have no idea if this is going to work or if people will want to use it, but I’m committed to giving it my time and attention for the next few months to find out. Thanks for reading and for the support.
Discussion 152 comments
Jolly good - I'm curious too to see what comes of this.
I am really excited about this - enough to get me to renew my subscription. It's a real value proposition to get to engage with other folks that consume your content. thank you!
YESSSSS for comments! Blogging is back (blogging never left)
long live blogging!
It's like it's 2003 all over again! Where can we share our blogroll? :)
I'm so tempted to post something self promoting, I can't stand it. But, I'm going with this. Fun!
Love it. Immediately tried to sign up, only to realize I'm already up to date on membership.
Did the same 🤦♂️
Also me. The sneakiness of annual subscriptions. Who can remember what they subscribed to or renewed last May?
Same here, I had no idea until I tried the memberful link. Not bad to support this blog without knowing it, though
Incredibly excited for this, can't wait to see how it develops!
As somebody who never comments on anything—but loves to get lost in every single comment thread, I support this.
same.
Posting comments on blogs was a pretty big part of what I did when I got into the web on the early 2000s. In the last five years, I don't think I've posted more than a dozen times on the few blogs I read that still allow commenting. Love that you're trying this and have high hopes for this self-selecting community to make it work.
Love this idea - very excited to learn from fellow kottke-heads.
I'm very intrigued to see what this community can generate. In almost every other circumstance I am despairingly dubious about what comment streams can provide. But.... color me hopeful.
Lovely! Finding out IRL that someone reads you is usually a good sign that we'll be simpatico, so I have high hopes for the online community version. Also this was a good way to find out that my membership had lapsed without me remembering, so hopefully there are a lot of us today who re-up.
Agree! back in my NY subway days I would occasionally see someone reading a particular book (a Culture novel, or a Malazan story) and would have no problem striking up a chat, something I'd never do otherwise, because I'd know there's already such an overlap of interest. Kottke is definitely the online version (and also what I lowkey hope happens whenever I have my hypertext shirt on).
So old school, I love it!
D'oh, there seems to be a time zone bug resulting in comment timestamps that are off for anyone who's not in EDT right now. Off to investigate.
Also! I looked at a ton of different commenting systems and implementations of comments & discussions when designing mine. Is there anything you've seen out there in terms of features or approach that you particularly like?
I'm curious to see how replying and nesting looks, so that's why I'm replying here.
I'm guessing this is technically more difficult, but Substack lets you refresh the comments without losing what you've written (including popping up a notice if someone else has already replied to a message) which seems like a good way to avoid having several people write basically the same reply at once.
I enjoy a simple like/favorite/upvote system. It doesn't need to impact chronology or have any other function. A simple count can help zero in on meaningful commentary. I make use of it on metafilter every day. It allows those of us who don't like to participate... to participate.
Upvote to simple upvotes.
I agree with Christopher and Neel. Upvotes please
(insert my upvote for the above comments here) thank you, Jason!
collapsable threading (like hacker news, e.g.) is really nice for navigating big threads and i really rely on it in apps like narwhal.
upvotes are kind of frustrating because people have a tendency to downvote the things they don't like, not necessarily things that aren't _relevant._ upvote is the "agree" button and downvotes are the "angry no."
i like the idea of more expressive ways to show what's valuable. might be cool to have discord-style reacts so you can emojis to things — i find that in public servers, people will pile on or add their own. you can always tell an interesting message there because it has a lot of reacts, and you can always tell the ✨vibe✨ based on what the actual emojis are.
some places have taken it even further and have a special emoji (usually a gold star) and when a comment gets enough of them, it gets highlighted or stored in a special "hall of fame" channel.
Another upvote for upvotes. I do see that a few comments have special tags on them as "pinned posts" with 3 positive emojis on them. I'm assuming this is something Jason controls now and not the community, but maybe I'm missing a feature?
Yeah, I can "pin" comments that I like. Hoping to add some sort of community feedback at some point. I don't think most threads will have this many comments in them...though I'm happy to be wrong about that!
Adding continued support for upvoting / liking comments.
Some forum that I visit infrequently has a limited set of positive reactions, I think they're Agree / Insightful / Awesome. I rarely feel like I have anything to add to the discussion, but I like being able to cheer others on with more than just a vague upvote.
Doing anything with that data after the fact seems like work - I'm sure many people love to see how many "awesomes" their comment received, and the most insightful comments could get promoted somehow, but I don't care about that. I just like to express tiny amounts of solidarity without feeling like I'm cluttering the comments.
Hello! Thrilled with the new feature of commenting. I’m jumping on this sub-thread just to add an alternate perspective that the lack of upvoting or singling out certain voices is much appreciated on Cup of Jo. While I understand that the mass of comments makes for significantly more work to read in totality, this structure retains a small-d democratic community experience. Really excited to be here. Thanks, Jason!
I like the idea of pinned comments. Theonlinephotographer has had featured comments for a long time-not sure if that’s exactly right for here-I think he spends *a lot* of time moderating comments-but pinned I think would work very well, for especially informative/enlightening comments. They can add a lot to a post.
Also, as someone who doesn’t use social media, I love the idea of comments around a site I really enjoy and find value in. I can currently only imagine how awesome the community of kottke.org members is-looking forward to seeing this in practice.
+1 for upvoting
Don’t fix it. There is only one time zone.
+1 for having to read all the comments. I actually much prefer that.
I subscribed, just so I could agree here. There is only one time zone: GMT.
Another upvote for upvotes! As suggested, it doesn't have to affect visibility to sort order - it can just be a numerical indicator by each comment. And you don't even need downvotes! If someone doesn't like a comment, oh well.
Bravo. Look forward to the conversations.
Hello, Kottke World! Loving the rationale and the chance to connect.
hello mbattles!
Feels like things have gone full circle. Nice to be back. Onwards Jason!
Amazing!
Maybe you're already thinking this (or maybe your repulsed by the idea), but the next step could by enabling contributions. Maybe just links with brief commentary; probably put into a moderating queue.
Or maybe I just miss blogging and this is my long game to taking over Kottke.org.
Don't tip him off, Rex
OMG the number of times I had to look up your blog post link on Twitter to comment there.... Thank you for adding this!
Hooray, excited to see where this leads. Did anyone catch any part of the annular eclipse over the weekend? We spotted it at maybe 30% blockage in the morning in Seattle.
I was able to see a full ring of fire in San Marcos, Texas. It was really cool. And we're getting the total eclipse in Austin next April.
I'm very happy to see this! I've always kept comments open on Waxy.org, but over the years, the combination of spam and low-quality comments forced me to switch to moderating all comments before they're posted. Making it members-only is a great idea, making moderation more manageable and providing another reason to support your work.
The more I think about it, the smarter I think it all is
Totally agree. I LOVE the idea of members-only commenting. I’ve felt a strange kinship with the kottke.org space over the years without being an active part of the community. This seems like the logical next step.
Looking forward to hearing from other Kottke readers. I have a hunch this is going to be a very interesting community!
I am so glad to see you do this! What a great move for kottke.org.
Congrats on getting the boat in the water! What a great feature to make a comeback in 2023 🎉
Out of sheer nerd curiosity, I’d love to read about any details of challenges or things you enjoyed while building out the system.
Really glad to see this, Jason -- I hope more people do likewise. Viva blogging!
As far as I'm concerned this might be the biggest thing to shake up the internet since Gangnam Style. Huzzah!
Love innovation that's also back to basics, hope this enriches an already super-rich site.
Excellent! If there had been comments on the recent post Launching a New Thing Soon! I would have left a comment saying: "Very curious about what is is, but I bet it's comments." A very meta way of saying "I knew it!"
Excellent! I was thinking about comments just the other day (for all of the reasons you mention). I love that this is the new thing! So smart. Thanks for adding this Jason!
This is a welcome addition, and it will be interesting to hear from other readers on books/movies/TV/media diet.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to that as well. I always get great emailed suggestions from folks after the media diet posts.
I’m imagining a comment thread where each entry is its own comment, with upvotes, replies, suggestions from others, etc.
I'm genuinely giddy about this. I'm so completely finished with X and the myriad apps that are attempting to replace them, and while Reddit and Facebook groups occasionally scratch the itch, there are so many low quality comments that unless you're FIRST! to post, you basically get buried. I miss thoughtful and interesting conversations and kottke.org is just my favorite little corner of the entire internet.
The people who reply to the Mastodon bot seem like a reasonable bunch. Hopefully this will just be a more popular version of that.
With my sole Kottke interactions being through the website, and therefore being unaware of any comments on other platforms, I've often wondered if anyone else was out there reading what I was reading... It will be great to hear from and contribute to the community!
This is the same for me. I've always wondered what the general vibe of the Kottke community was. Interested to see what it's like now and if it shifts any as we're exposed to each other more.
Good work- after checking in on a near-daily basis for almost 15 years, this is the kick in the pants I needed to go ahead and become a member. Here's to 15 more!
i'm not much of a commenter personally, but kottke.org has been my daily driver for years, so i'm dropping a note to say: cool.
Like A Cup of Jo, Defector, a sports news and commentary site (with other stuff), also has an only-paying-subscribers-may-comment model, and the comments are almost always great. Looking forward to this.
You got me, Jason. This is one of the finest sites on the web, and the ability to occasionally contribute a thought to it is well worth the price of a subscription.
I'm excited to see what comes of this. I've had a love / hate relationship with commenting or years, but I think that most of the people here are fellow travelers, even when we may disagree! So many of the links posted here (thanks Jason!) have spawned great discussions on other platforms that I'd love to bring those home so to speak.
This should get me to actually visit the site instead of just using Feedly to half-mindlessly grazing the RSS feed.
I was pleased and somewhat surprised to find that I actually had a login for kottke.org in my password manager. Had you been planning something like this for a while, or is that just a stock part of the membership system?
It's part of the membership program. Members need to be able to log in to renew, cancel, upgrade/downgrade, change their CC #, etc. But you can also use it as an identity layer for things like this.
So excited to see the kinds of information people share and discussions that get generated. This is already one of my favourite daily sites to visit. I'm excited to engage even more with my fellow readers! Thank you for making this happen Jason!
The dream of the 2000's are back, and I'm so here for it!
Love this. Thanks Jason! So curious, is this a custom built comment system? Tell us more about what's under the hood.
Long time reader, first time commenter…
Congratulations on this new direction for the site; I'm also very interested and optimistic about what those here will be able to add.
As someone who never got into Twitter, I've often wished kottke.org had comments to hear more reactions/conversation/etc on certain posts. Seems promising!
Love this! joemygod.com has a wonderful community of commenters that I lurk in daily. Here's to kottke.org having the same.
Great idea, I love a good comment section and this seems a good way to manage it. They, and this text field, look nice too. I'd quite like a "Preview" option before posting.
Back when Twitter was less bad and more popular with people I know, I thought that only allowing people I followed to post comments on my blog might be one way to filter out spam, but that would have had its own drawbacks.
One of my favourite comment-enabled blogs is The Online Photographer. They're a pleasant, knowledgable bunch and Mike Johnston reads and approves (or doesn't) every comment, which keeps the spam out.
Ok, wow. This is a great idea as the wisdom of the Kottke readership is no doubt vast. On the other hand, is there some way of surfacing the best/most interesting comments? This thread already has more than 60 comments...should there be some kind of feedback mechanism (thumbs up?) to help sort the comments?
Yeah, it's in the works — not sure when though. I feel like most posts will not get this many comments in such a short time. If I'm wrong about that, I may have to prioritize feedback. For now, moderators (just me rn) can flag the "best" comments and they get a little emoji badge above the comment on the right side.
Best news of the day. I used to love comments at a few select sites. I mostly lurk but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read a post at kottke and was just itching to talk more about it with *someone.* Excited that you, fellow reader, will be my someone! Became a first time member today!
I appreciate that the comments are limited to members, but I also agree with Jason's concern that this could exclude readers who cannot afford a membership. I wonder whether AI could be a companion in helping moderate comments and prevent spam? Who is working on training bots to identify and weed out mean spirited commenters and other bots?
Delightful. (And bonus to confirm that I'm up to date on my membership.) Well done, @kottke!
Also thrilled to see this. (And laughing to find myself in the unusual position of not being the only Moira in the room/blog commentariat.)
Ha, yay! (I just looked and there are actually 4 Moiras who are members.)
I don't believe you are public about the size of your membership (and I have no problem with that nor do I expect you to reply to this), but I felt compelled to ask GPT4 to estimate it based on your having 4 members named Moira and it came up with 40,000 -- that's pretty good if true! I also learned that the name Moira has been fairly consistent in popularity since the 50's but had a noticeable popularity dip in the 70's/80's -- any of you four Moiras have a theory as to why?
That would be amazing! But sadly not even close.
my guess as to popularity in the 50s would be because of the actress moira shearer, but no idea about the 70s-80s dip. the relatively huge percentage of moiras here is really interesting tho- that's never happened to me in any situation ever
Thx, J! Your commitment to improvement is always inspiring and I look forward to getting to know my Kottkegues.
Big Snarkmarket energy.
[raised hands emoji]
Great job! I love comments.
Whoa. This site has been an internet daily driver for more than 10 years, so it's a little mind-blowing to get a window into everyone else here. Exciting times indeed.
Next up, Kottke-edition AOL chat rooms?
Vive le old weird internet!
The community in the comments at Defector is one of the big reasons I love that site and am a member there. Consider different levels of membership that grant different access or features to comments?
Also, you need a way to flag comments that violate the community guidelines. This will enable the community and streamline moderation work.
I wanted so badly to post "First!" but, yeah, nowhere near. I'm super excited (hopeful?) to see if this works. I have run a comment blocking extension in Safari because there is usually nothing to be gained by reading the comments on most websites. I've whitelisted Kottke and hope it's an oasis! We can do this fellow Kottke readers!
This has a positive throwback feeling that I really like/miss about early blogging and the community-building that came with it. It's like Kottke.org but in 3D. Looking forward to the conversations that this particular community will create.
Well this is wonderful and so are you
Making the web a better place since 1998. Amazing.
This is great. Will a post’s comments turn off after some duration? I wonder if some sort of “Old posts with new comments” feature could surface interesting new comments on old posts that might not otherwise get noticed.
Yay! excited to see how this goes! CoJ comments are the only ones I read any more- glad for the opportunity here.
First!
83!
Sorry, could not resist. Such a great idea, and smart use of the membership status (at least as a starting point, but maybe long term, it will keep being the right line in the sand, really curious to see).
So great! I can't imagine a group of commenters I'd like to hear from more than loyal Kottke readers. Here's to hoping that the comments are as good as the content!
In 2001 I would have said I was stoked for this.
*sits down in the rocker, lights a pipe, and sits back with a wistful look, puffing away*
kottke.org used to have comments on posts back in the late 90s (these aren't public on the site anymore...I have a database of them somewhere) and also throughout the 2000s and early 2010s. Always good stuff in the comment threads, but they were also a lot of work. I'm hoping this iteration brings the quality and community but still leaves me time to focus on the rest of the site.
A couple (minor) suggestions:
1) Can we have the comment box at the top? Or some way of getting to it quickly without having to. scroll down all the way to the bottom?
2) Can we get some sort of indicator on the home page that we are logged in (or not)? I couldn't enter comments at first but realized I wasn't signed in.
Hi Khurram, those are both good points. I'll have to think about how to best accomplish #1 and #2 is definitely on the list of things to do.
I think having to scroll down to comment might be a good feature to keep. Otherwise it could be too easy to just drive-by comment without reading the existing thread.
Is this thing on? Hell yes it is. Great idea, Jason. Kottke.org has always felt like something of a refuge—a reminder of what the web once was. This move will make it even more so. Looking forward to getting to know folks here.
Love to see this. A lively and civil comments section is always great.
👋
It’s been a long time since our days at hesketh.com. Hope you’re well!
Wow! It’s invigorating (and also weird) to see soooo many other people here. Hello everyone, really looking forward to hearing more from the Kottkemmunity!
Hello new friends! Pumped to be part of a reasonably sized community of reasonable people :D
Very excited to see this!
Waitaminnut... who are all of these other people? I thought Jason was just writing to me (and, I guess, Tim)!
I'm psyched to see what this community is actually like. It's interesting to have a community of people—is it a "community"? I guess we will see—who each chose individually and without coordination to support something they like, over a number of years. It's kind of like what fandoms used to be like before the Internet. And someone just created forums.
Whoa. As someone who exclusively reads vis RSS this will definitely get me to visit the actual website more. Nice stuff.
One downside I perceive already is that this will vastly magnify the amount of time I spend on kottke.org when I should be working.
What about an RSS feed…. for comments?
I have to sit down and figure out what the best ways are to keep people informed of comment activity: home page, RSS, social, newsletter, email, etc.
Very nice! I look forward to having my ill-thought out blurts immortalised forever on this site.
An idea - could those posts with comments enabled be flagged somehow in the RSS / Masto feeds? Like a 💬 or something?
Yeah, that is definitely on the list.
Happy to give this a try. Is there any chance to get a sense of (generally) where people are from? I live in Sydney (waves hi from afar) and it would be great to know about other AUS/NZ kottke-goers.
Thanks!
I'm maybe going to do some open threads with themes and having people intro themselves with where they live would be a good one!
Did not expect this - I thought you discussed comments when you were a guest of John Gruber's TTS, and that you were both against it. Maybe I misremember.
In any case, I welcome the idea, particularly opening to members only. Seems a good way to strike a balance between openness and moderation.
Good luck! Eager to see where this leads.
Late to the party. Bravo.
Did you look at the Ars commenting system? Quite mature. They have a way of promoting / featuring "staff favorite" comments that goes beyond just adding emoticons.
I second Tim Carmody's suggestion of an RSS feed for comments.
While we're dreaming... how about a notification system (email / text?) for when others interact with a comment stream you participate in.
This is my first comment so I don't yet know whether I will be able to edit it later. If not, would be nice.
I was thinking about notifications too. I would prefer a badge on the page or on the member account page vs email or text. But anything would do, really.
Interesting. I wonder if comment adoption will spread beyond people who remember it from the early days, or get embraced by new generations the way throwback jerseys and vinyl albums have been.
What’s next: trackbacks? The return of Technorati?
Awww yeah. It’s 2023 and YOLO vibes are in full effect — comments are back baby.
Into it!
This is so cool! For a long time I’ve felt that kottke.org readers were an invisible community. I guessed there were a lot of us, but I never knew where to find them. Now I do. Cheers!
Going back in time these days tends to be fraught with peril, but blog commenting is definitely an exception!
This is a great idea! I have often wondered what other people thought about your posts, or how they might inspire them, as they inspire me
I'm a user of feed readers, so it would be great to have a way of knowing via the feed if a post has comments available so I can jump to the site to participate
Comments, let's go!
Hello from your friends (well, really it's just me) at Sidebar!
Echoing what everyone else has said, this feels right to me; not just bringing comments back, but bringing comments back with clear community guidelines and membership as a prerequisite (though I understand the misgivings about monetary restrictions).
But this is the bit that really excites me:
Yes! More experiments like this please! Experiments that aren't just “let’s clone Twitter”.
This is a great idea — well done! I look forward to the added flavor the members will bring. I might need to read twice a day now so I’m not late to the party.
I'm so glad to see this!
Just a tech note to say that I had to log out of my memberful and log back in to be able to comment.
Thanks for the report. I may, in the course of ripping the guts out of the membership system and putting them back together again, have done something to screw things up. Glad you got it to work!
Didn’t see anything in the Community Guidelines about posting if your only expertise is rhetorical arguments on cat videos. Hope I can contribute.
I wish you had comments on when you posted about the Cheetos Mac and Cheese. I could have warned you that they were very underwhelming.
Love the idea and looking forward to seeing how it all plays out.
I have no memory of renewing my membership last March but I'm glad I did (for many reasons)! I'm looking forward to see how this plays out.
I occasionally read the comments at NYTimes, but only the reader-picked ones, and only a quick scroll to: 1) see what funny things the most vocal partisan commenters are saying ; or 2) affirm that my well-reasoned and insightful opinion is shared by others.
I comment on Reddit from time to time but regardless of what one posts, there's at least a 20% negative response to anything. Being a fragile snowflake, I obviously cannot handle that.
Excited and curious. I haven't commented on a blog in ages. I also have grown so weary of social media, so this may just be the ticket. Thanks for all that you bring to the world and the web Jason.
You are hosting a potluck and trust we are all decent cooks-- thanks for the vote of confidence! I will do my best not to over-season the hot-dish, and, truly, look forward to
...oops, I hit 'post' a bit too soon... meant to say, I look forward to any and all casseroles and jello salads. Thanks Jason.
This has made me oddly nostalgic. I feel like I’m back in 2002. I think this has the potential to be something great and I am excited to be here. Thanks for having us!
I love that someone is still working on a really clean way to present threaded comments and keep a commentariat in line. I spent so much of the late 90s/early 2000s on this, after writing a peer-support chatroom for Scope in 1995, but kind of gave up around Disqus time.
🍿
as the kids say now. Good luck!
Sweet! I hope everyone behaves…
Big thumbs up for comments! Thanks for adding it, Jason!
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