Usage of disqus instead of mailinglist considered harmful (was: Disqus commenting system tested on Worg)

[Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at>]

* John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Apr 7, 2012 4:28 AM, "Bastien" <bzg@gnu.org> wrote:
>>
>> The question now is: on what Worg pages should we have this
>> comment system?
>
> True. And how to balance the mailing list vs disqus... While thw mailing
> list is great, sometimes for the life of me I can't find a discussion I
> know exists. If it were attached to a Worg page it would just be there
> instead of having to remember the specific syntax to google.

Oh I'd like to warn here: disqus is a private commercial company
that wants to make money.

Their strategy can (and will) change from one day to the other.

They can not guarantee that the API, focus of service,
long-time-data-preservation, ... does not change.

Mailinglists - though currently handled by gmane which is also a
company - are a standard that is independent from any company. You
can extract the complete archive if you want and host it somewhere
else. No fuzz here.

Disqus offers export to XML (AFAIR) but where could you import it as
an alternative hosting service?

I consider services as *disqus better than no discussion at all* but
it is *nonpermanent* information. It can disappear from one day to
the other[1]. I do like to see disqus comments on Worg-pages to give
non-Worgers the possibility to interact with the Worg-community.

But remember: any information (only) posted to disqus is lost in the
long run. I'd like to bet on that. BTDT. :-)

Therefore: Any *important* information contained in disqus comments
have to be written to the Worg-pages (or the Mailinglist) as well.


I beg you not to shift discussions from ML to disqus and to continue
posting to the mailinglist. Since ML is a well structured and well
backup-able communication channel that is way better future-proof
than the neat features of disqus.

Imagine there would not be any Org-mode ML-archive[2] at all ...


Besides that: I personally prefer using mailinglists with my news
reader than with my email client. With gmane I do have the choice.
With disqus, I do have to use a web frontend I do not like.
Things like following threads, scoring for people or topics,
filtering, composing (in Emacs or vim), is *much* better outside of
Web forums or services like disqus.

> Or should disqus comments be more like wiki discussions? Only for
> commenting on the page itself. Definitely neat; as you said, we'll have to
> see how it evolves!

  1. Who can obviate shutdown and/or bankruptcy of disqus.com?
  2. http://news.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode
-- 
Karl Voit