SR Studies New Comment System

Our current commenting system isn’t much different than when we launched this version of our website four years ago. The Spokesman-Review development team is small, and we have all sorts of projects vying for our time, so as long as comments kept working, our development priorities have been elsewhere.

But at the end of 2012, we started considering how we might improve commenting on Spokesman.com. Not only the level of discussion here, but also the technology we use. Over the years, commenters have suggested a number of features that would absolutely improve our site, even though we don’t necessarily have enough development time to build them ourselves.

So we started looking into options for replacing our homegrown commenting with something new, and we found an app we really do like: Disqus . It’s used by quite a few high-profile sites, and it offers some great features for people who enjoy commenting here:

• new users can sign in with social-media accounts, like Facebook and Twitter, or with Spokesman accounts.
• current commenters can continue logging in like they always have, but would also have the option to tie social-media profiles to their comments, to make sharing easier.
• commenters have the option of replying directly to another post, so conversations are threaded and easier to follow.
• commenters can upvote and downvote the posts in a thread.

There are plenty more features that makes Disqus one of the better commenting systems around. I think it would be a huge improvement to the experience on Spokesman.com. But I’d love to hear what people think.

Here’s an example of Disqus in action underneath an NPR story . Take a look and let us know what you think. — Ryan Pitts