This one’s for all the regular (or occasional) Liliputing commenters. This site has used the Disqus comment system since we first launched in April, 2008. At the time, Disqus offered clear benefits over the default WordPress comment system, including support for threaded comments, upvotes, spam detection (which clearly doesn’t always work), comment moderation tools.
At the time Disqus was also completely free for most publishers. Over the years Disqus has rolled out a few different monetization options. Larger publishers can pay for premium features, and all sites can opt-in to Disqus ads, which can appear above or in the middle of the comments sections.
Starting later this week, all publishers using Disqus will have to either enable ads or pay for a subscription. So I figured I’d ask you to help me make a decision.
Disqus comments
I have no interest in enabling ads through Disqus. I’ve tried them out a few times over the years, and generally find them to be low-quality, clickbait/spammy ads that are for products and services that have little to do with the mobile tech news Liliputing is focused on.
So I plan to either pay a monthly fee or just turn off Disqus and give Jetpack Comments a try. Jetpack is an enhanced version of the native WordPress comments developed by the developers of WordPress.
Jetpack allows users to login using an email address, WordPress account, Twitter, Google+ or Facebook. Comments will probably load more quickly for most users with Jetpack than Disqus, but users would have less control over sorting comments and you won’t be able to see users comment history across all Disqus sites.
Jetpack Comments
I already have a Jetpack subscription, which includes the Akismet spam filtering service, so hopefully that would be at least as effective as Disqus at detecting and quarantining comment spam.
To be clear, a Disqus subscription isn’t actually all that expensive, at least not for a site the size of Liliputing. And I’ve been reasonably satisfied with Disqus for the many years I’ve been using it. But the new policy taking place this week provides as good an excuse as any to at least consider making a change.
There are other commenting systems, and I’m open to suggestions. But right now I’m inclined to either pony up a bit of cash for an ad-free Disqus experience or give Jetpack Comments or native WordPress comments a try.
For a more detailed comparison, pojo blog has a pretty good run down of some key differences between Disqus, Jetpack, and WordPress comments.
What system would you prefer to see on Liliputing moving forward? Keep in mind, any decision I reach will not necessarily be final, but I’d like your input before deciding whether to try out a new commenting system in the near future.
I’d be perfectly happy to try a new system if it will save you a couple dollars.
It’s somewhat convenient with Disqus currently that I can see a count of actions/replies which works with several sites and not just one. But that isn’t that big of a deal really.
As you say, it doesn’t have to be permanent so give the other system a try if you want.
I also might be slightly optimistic that switching platforms will be easy: there are 125,874 comments in Liliputing’s database!
Anything that allows me to post anonymously (or as a guest)… most the times I don’t want to bother with login and to keep my account available….
First off, thanks for asking for the opinions of your readers before making your decision. I first signed up for Disqus in order to make comments on NPR. Last year they decided to ban all comments online. Here and the Atlantic website are the last places that I use Disqus. My two cents is that you should do whatever makes you most comfortable. I trust in your good judgement, so thanks again for giving me a heads up about a possible change that is more than NPR did.
Yeah, I totally understand and respect the decision made by NPR and some other news sites to disable comments. Things can get very heated, and moderation can be difficult. But I generally think comments add to the value of a site like Liliputing, and I know I regularly click through from my RSS reader to view article son other tech sites just so I can see what commenters have to add to the discussion.
I’ve been reading the comments right up until I reached mine and then edited it. Please do not switch to Jetpack unless it has spellcheck and allows edits.
WordPress comments (I think that is what is described as Jetpack here) only allows edits for four minutes after the comment is made. Disqus has a longer edit time. Is that worth thousands of dollars a month, no. Is it worth $50 per month, probably. Of course this site might not have a high net income (if any) after travel, computer, monitor, server rental or maintenance (I obviously am not privy to that information), most blogs I am familiar with (admittedly not aimed at the computer or electronics industry) are mainly used to bring in business to other ventures or are otherwise not intended to make a profit. I appreciate what you do and like to read this site (and comment on it) but don’t want the cost of this site to increase to the point where you can no longer afford to subsidize it and even $50 monthly expenses… Read more »
Hehe. It’s less than $50/month… the only reason I haven’t said the number here is because I’m not sure if it’s the same for every site, so I don’t want to put out any disinformation. This website is reasonably profitable, and ads on the site have been my primary source of income for the past 7 or 8 years. Our server bill is pretty high, because we pay for managed hosting (so someone else deals with keeping the site online and I can focus on producing content). And ad revenue has been trending downward for the past few years (this is something I hear from other small-ish bloggers too). But I can definitely afford the price Disqus is asking. I just wanted to find out if readers care. 🙂 As best I can tell, the upside of disabling Disqus is that comments would load more quickly. The down side is… Read more »
Then flip a coin 😉
I am glad to read that you are one of the lucky ones, Brad although I hope ad revenue starts to increase rather than a slow decrease. You put a lot of work and travel into this site, I am glad it is paying off for you — and hope it continues to do so. It is the same with YouTube channels with advertising attached to them. A few make good money while most don’t (I heard recently that a certain YouTuber with “Pew” in his name nets $22K per month off of his YouTube channel, I don’t watch his videos so I cannot comment on them). If you can continue to maintain the status quo for less than $50 per month and the site is providing you a reasonable lifestyle I would probably keep Disqus.
Personally, I almost only use disqus for liliputing and dilbert. I’ve used jet pack a few times and had no issue with them.
BTW, don’t forget to vote in the poll above! (I goofed, and it wasn’t visible when this article first went live, but it should be there now!)
As long as whatever you choose has a spell checker. I don’t need to look like even more of an idiot than I already do on here.
99% of the value I derive from comments is crowd-sourced spell checking. Y’all are pretty good at pointing out my typos so I can fix them. 🙂
Go for the ads, these days anyone who isn’t blocking the worst of them obviously doesn’t care and has learned to ignore them. All I see is “Comments continue after advertisement” scattered through the comments on sites that are using them. If the ads on the Internet these days weren’t vile and often outright hostile I’d enable some of them to show support…. but they are and aren’t likely to change.
But longterm it was obvious disqus was going to monetize, everything on the Internet lives to monetize eyeballs.
Oh yeah, I have no problem with them monetizing, and I’ve gotten a ton of value out of the service for free over the years. But there are plenty of ads on Liliputing (even if about a quarter of our readers never see them) and I have no interest in adding any more ad units without removing existing units at the same time.
But that’s not something I’m willing to do with Disqus ads. They’re low-quality, and low-paying compared to the other ads on the site. So I’m 100% certain that I’ll either pay for the service, or switch services. But I don’t want to subject visitors without ad blockers to the kinds of ads that I personally can’t stand on other sites.
As I have said before I have this site white-listed in my ad blocker to allow ads through. I know making a living off of journalism is very difficult when you don’t have a large newspaper, magazine or TV network behind you. Without knowing how much Disqus charges for an ad-free comment section I can’t give a good answer. I happen to like the comments section here (I have experience with the WordPress comments section on an NSFW blog I have read and commented on for years — which he retired from at the end of 2016 and is now transitioning to its new owner’s server so I can’t link to it currently and would be leery of doing so anyway due to its content), it works OK but Disqus is more fluid in its operation and slightly easier to use — making it my preference if it isn’t too… Read more »
Give the change to Jet Pack a shot. If it doesn’t work out, you can always change over. Fortunately this isn’t an irreversible thing. Also, tracking someone’s replies on other topics on other sites… stalkery “feature”.
I think the answer to your question will be answered in a month from now. If you change the messaging system and you notice replies taking a nosedive, the answer would be “better to stay with disqus”. I don’t know the advantages or disadvantages of the other systems, but I think the major advantage of disqus is that no one will have to change his habits. It’s a risk to change the messaging system.
That being said, if the money disqus asks is significant, I would probably give a try with another messaging system. You can always announce a testing period of a month and see how it goes.. But I wouldn’t try the ad supported version of disgus because people who have whitelisted liliputing might reconsider that option.
This is the best reply I’ve read all day!
I would be willing to give the Jetpack a try. But the sign-on with Google feature in Disqus is very nice.