Bill Kearney

Weaving a rich comment path

I'm getting the impression folks are starting to come around to the idea of bidirectional and signed comments. I've believed this has been needed for quite a while now.

What I'm interested in is an easy way for me to tell a commenting system who I am. I'm then interested in that commenting system interacting with something back on my weblog's end for the purpose of keeping track of what I've posted and where. I want to post to a comment system and then not have to do a lot of dirty work in keeping track of what I posted and to where.

An initial way to do this would be similar to how TrackBack functions. Have the comment system accept a URL from me and then use that URL to figure out how to not only validate and accept my posting but to send me a record of it. E-mail does this but keeps the messages here on my end via the sent-mail folder. Commenting systems really need something like this.

The e-mail folks would certainly be tempted to say something to the effect of 'just use e-mail to deliver your comments'. This would work but would also require a whole bunch of admin-controlled changes be put into place. As in, it's not going to happen for the great majority of sites out there. Yes, if the commenting systems could generate unique mailto links it could work. The link would contain an address specifically tailored for receiving a comment. The user could then simply use their existing mail client to post a reply. The problem here has several facets. The first of which is the stuff that would need to be done on the server side to accept these specially addressed messages. A hosting site could certainly do this. But for sites running standalone on simple web server account would not be able to make these configuration changes. And then there's the whole train wreck of handling the inevitable spamming that would develop. Additionally, using mail would require the clients have a mail client at their disposal. Folks surfing from different computers, using handhelds or phones wouldn't generally have this available to them. So it's both a server and a client side hassle. Having one side or the other is bad enough, having both sides dooms it from the start.

One important thing to recognize about a weblog service like MovableType is it's ability to allow your weblog site to actually run code. Contrast this with sites like those driven from Radio Userland and it's an important benefit. When you use a TrackBack you're asking your weblog server to actually go and run code that pulls down the trackback page, extracts the data and then presents it to you. This is not being done in your browser! The grunt work here is being done by your MT site and it's server. This is a powerful feature and one missing from most other weblog tools prior to MT's implementation.

I'm of the opinion something could likewise be done here with commenting. Trackbacks sort of do this now. It's possible to have a trackback sent to a site instead of a comment. There's a downside here. In order for me to send you a trackback I have to post an item on my weblog. It's that item that holds the link to your site. It's that item's text that gets sent to your site in the form a trackback ping. This isn't what most folks seem to want. To start with it's too much work. But what's really an issue is the requirement that my site have an item soley to support the trackback.

I suppose one could work around this by using a separate weblog, that's not public, to hold and manage these things. I don't see that as a viable solution. It's just too cumbersome and violates all sorts of simplicity rules.

It would really help if my weblog had a private way for me to keep track of my comments. Then my site could send the comment to yours. Your site would have to have a standardized way to accept comments. All I'd have to do is create a bookmarklet that, when clicked while viewing your page, pulled up my commenting system, allowed me to compose the comment, saved it and sent it to yours. I'd get to keep track of my posted comments and you'd get a reasonable assurance that the comment came from a system that could be held accountable. Your system would still be able to accept regular web page posted comments for those not using this system.

In fact, this system would work well in a hosted situation as well. The bookmarklet I'd be using could just as well be linked to a hosting service that does all the management for me.

To make this work will require three pieces. A standard commenting protocol. A server-side interface on your end and a comment manager on my end. This might not be all that hard to build...